


Dust and shadow

by Laurie



Category: Better Call Saul (TV), Breaking Bad
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mike feels, Nacho feels, Non-Graphic Violence, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, some Nacho appreciation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-04 08:45:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15837807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurie/pseuds/Laurie
Summary: All good things come to an end. Nacho learns that the hard way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I'm cursed to forever fancy the characters and pairing no one else couldn't care less about, so I've been mostly writing for fandoms that don't exist. So here's another one of those.  
> So this is a Mike/Nacho story no one asked for. Mike has always been one of my favourite characters ever, and I've recently developed a fascination for Nacho and his dynamic with Mike. Here's my attempt at exploring their characters and their relationship with each other. Mostly though, this was born from my indignation about the lack of either Nacho or Mike fics out there. It just felt too lonely in my head, so here goes...  
> Some canon AU along the way  
> Enjoy, dear readers - that is, if you exist at all.

1.

In the dim light coming from the street lamp outside Nacho has to squint hard to make out the details of the interior of the place. He is not going to turn the lights on – he doesn’t want the man seeing them from outside and coming upon him like some kind of Grandpa-style James Bond – so he lets his eyes adjust, walks around the small rooms.

There aren’t many things to look at – noting to help him solve the mystery that is Mike (last name unknown), no personal stuff that people generally tend to have and leave scattered around their personal space, no books, no journals or magazines, no framed pictures of relatives or friends – that is to say, the place hardly looks like someone is actually living there. If not for the fact that the place is meticulously clean and neat, he wouldn’t be able to tell if it was inhabited or not.

He walks around silently, careful not to make a sound, looks at the empty walls and clean surfaces of the kitchen table, the desk, the nightstand, willing his galloping heart to slow down. What does all of this say about the man? That he is completely and utterly alone? But Nacho knows for a fact that Mike has a granddaughter and a daughter-in-law, so he can’t be that alone, can he? Weren’t they the reason Mike had to step onto his principles and let himself be paid off by Hector? So, what then? Is he some sort of hermit or just paranoid and simply won’t let anything personal ever compromise him again, should someone like Nacho pry into his life, uninvited?

More importantly, exactly what the fuck does Nacho think he is doing here?

He pushes the thought aside, his heart starting on its violent race again. He concentrates on Mike’s room instead, surveys the neatly-made bed, the furniture in the room that looks like Mike’s put it together himself, the nightstand with nothing on it but the plain looking lamp. He comes closer, his own breathing terribly loud in his ears, and carefully slides the drawer open.

He is too curious now, too interested, and so he turns his flashlight on to get a good look. Inside, he finds various pill bottles, aspirin, band aids, and several books stashed on top of each other. He picks up the one on top – _Crime and Punishment_ – that looks worn and well-read, opens it where Mike has bookmarked it.

Mike actually underlines, Nacho finds to his amusement and quickly rising interest. He knows people tend to underline things that confirm to their own worldview, so he reads what Mike’s marked up: “ _To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's_.”

His heart thumping in his chest, he lets out a breath he hasn’t realized he’s been holding. Isn’t that symbolic, he thinks, for Mike to highlight the very thing Nacho believes he is himself doing. Isn’t it, really, some kind of a sign from the Universe itself for him to read this exact sentence here, today, hardly an hour after what he had done earlier?

But before he can muse any further on any cosmic forces that might have brought him here today, he notices a piece of paper that must have fallen out of the book. He bends down to pick it up, looks at what turns out to be a photograph of a young boy – maybe ten years old – laughing at the camera with a kind-hearted but mischievous look on his face, like children tend to. Nacho examines the boy in the picture carefully – there’s no doubt in his mind that this boy is related to Mike – the physical resemblance alone would give it away – but there’s also the sharp intelligence showing in his eyes, the way he is biting his lip as if to contain his laughter like Nacho has once seen Mike do –

“It’s very rude to go through someone’s things,” a voice suddenly says, coming from behind him, and Nacho is embarrassed to find that not only Mike has seen him coming from miles away, he’s also managed to sneak up to him without him even suspecting. He can’t believe his own stupidity and sloppiness, and the fact that should it have been anyone else – he could’ve been killed by now doesn’t exactly help. “Now slowly turn around, and put your hands up,” Mike says, his voice as calm and collected as ever, and Nacho has to give credit where credit is due – this man is more competent and professional than all of Hector’s henchmen and bodyguards put together.

He turns around, hands up, trying to convey he’s no threat. Mike is standing in the doorway and there’s a gun in his hand, pointed right at Nacho’s head. He hurries to shine the flashlight on his face, lets Mike see who he is.

“It’s me,” he says, voice hoarse and shaky, matching up to how he feels. It’s very disheartening to be on this end of Mike’s gun, and he does not want to give the man any possible reason to keep it pointed at him. “No one knows I’m here.”

Mike watches him silently, eyes focused and intense, and then puts down the gun and turns the light on.

“So why are you here?” Mike inquires, putting the gun away and boring a hole in Nacho’s face. He quickly puts the book and the photo back where he’d found them, feeling vaguely guilty, and stands straight, collecting himself, his arms crossed on his chest. Mike doesn’t seem impressed, nor does he acknowledge his sorry attempt to look threatening.

“How did you know I was here?” He says instead of answering Mike’s question, the answer to which he does not even know himself.

Mike snorts loudly, almost exactly as he did back when Nacho asked him how he had found out where Nacho worked – like Mike is not even going to bother with his idiocy.

“I swear, you kids these days…” Mike murmurs, seemingly amused with Nacho’s naiveté, and looks at him with an expression almost soft. In his embarrassment and the silence of the room, Nacho is suddenly deafened by the sound of a ticking clock and his own erratic, uneven breathing. He holds off the moment where he has to explain himself, desperately, because he can’t even explain it to himself.

“I switched the pills,” he finally says, words rushing out of his mouth in one hot dry breath.

Mike is silent, and there’s a distinct _tick-tock-tick-tock_ coming from the kitchen. He swallows.

“I was careful, I did it quickly, and I made sure no one noticed anything,” he adds, just to feel the silence.

“Okay,” Mike says slowly, drawing the word out. He looks like he is waiting for some more elaboration, which is not coming.

Nacho tries to calm his heart, his breathing, his trembling hands, and looks away from Mike’s intense eyes, almost drowning in his embarrassment. He can’t remember ever being this out of it in front of another person, and he begs the gods for this moment to be over.

“Okay,” Mike says again, his eyebrows going up. “And so what, you decided that I needed your daily reports?”

Burning with humiliation, he shuts his eyes, wipes the sweat from his forehead. Indeed, what the hell was he thinking – coming here? There’s no more way for him to further delay examining the reason for this act of absolute foolishness, and now it comes crashing down on him with a weight of a ton of bricks. Is he an idiot? Is that what it is? Is he so desperately out of it, that he would risk his own safety, the safety of both his Dad and Mike by coming here to – what? Unburden himself? Talk about it? What the fuck did he even expect, coming here in the middle of the night, like some idiotic rookie burglar, to a person who couldn’t give a single fuck if a scum like him lived or died?

“Yeah, no, I’ll just go,” he croaks out and heads for the exit, before he can lose what is left of his dignity. He’s almost at the front door when he hears Mike’s voice:

“Kid, wait.”                                                          

It’s the second time now that Mike has called him _kid_ , and Nacho doesn’t know how he feels about that. He stops dead in his tracks, turns around to look at Mike, whose entire posture seems to have relaxed, shoulders going down a notch, and who is taking his jacket off. He watches Mike throw his jacket on the back of the couch, go to the fridge and get two beer bottles out. He holds one out to Nacho, who takes a tentative step forward, then stops.

“Come on, this is what you came here for, isn’t it?” Mike says in his signature calm tone, like he’s talking about the leather he wants to pick out for his junk car, but now there’s also a note of something else there, something warm and good-humoured. He is looking at Nacho like he is a skittish animal ready to flee any moment, and that makes Nacho snap out of it, and so he crosses the distance left between them, takes the bottle, plops down on the couch.

Mike smirks, opens his own beer, sits down a respectable distance away from Nacho, which almost, _almost_ makes him wish he were closer. He opens his beer, pushes the thought away – like fuck is he going to go _there_ – and tries to make himself relax.

Mike is – of course – silent next to him, sipping on his beer, not trying to get Nacho to talk and not saying anything himself. Strangely, it has a calming effect on him, and finally, he feels his body gradually unclench and unfold, and he almost melts into the back of the couch, all energy coming out of him like air from a balloon.

“It’s just,” he starts saying, but his voice comes out all scratchy and wrong. Must be something with the acoustics, he thinks and tries again. “It’s just that you’re the only one who knows about any of this.”

 _You’re the only one I can talk to,_ he doesn’t say. Mike hears it anyway.

“Ah,” Mike lets out. This man just never ceases to amaze Nacho with how much he can make the tiniest of sounds speak volumes. “So you come here to confess your sins. I guess it’s not the kind of talk you would get into with a barman and a glass of scotch.”

“I’ve never, um, I’ve never actually…” he trails off, feeling too ridiculous to say it. Thankfully, Mike knows exactly what he means.

“You’ve never killed anyone before,” Mike finishes for him.

“I’ve seen it done a million fucking times,” Nacho hurries to say, feeling he has to somehow justify his incompetence by bringing up the fact that he is a fucking gangster who works for Hector Salamanca of all people. “Like, I can’t even tell you half of it. I have a piece of a guy’s skull under my skin for fuck’s sake!”

“But _you’ve_ never killed anyone before,” Mike says again.

Nacho gulps down some beer. It’s true – for all he’s seen and done, he was never actually the one to pull the trigger, he was never the one to take someone else’s life. He’s always been the silent muscle kind of guy, the one who stands in the back and looks intimidating; the one who would beat the shit of out of someone and scare the living daylights out of them, but never the one to finish someone off. He’s been extra fucking careful to not be _finishing_ guy, to always back off, to disappear when the question of making someone disappear would come up. He’s been careful to make sure to be somewhere else, to be unavailable or even get someone else to do it, because murder was not the reason he got in the business – more like an unfortunate side effect that he could not avoid seeing. He would try for some damage control, and he would try for anything else over killing, because while dealing drugs was all glorified danger and easy money, Hector fucking Salamanca would not be the one to dictate on what Nacho can keep of the last shreds of his own humanity.

Isn’t it funny, how it all came down to Hector, after all?

“No,” he finally admits. “I haven’t killed anyone before.”

He chances a glance at Mike, who is staring ahead of himself with a far-away look on his face. The _tick-tock_ of the clock is especially loud in his ears, and there’s a sound of blasting music from a passing car outside. Just for having something to do, he takes a sip of his beer. It tastes vile in his mouths. He takes a few more, swallows it down, waits for Mike to say something. He is not sure anything is coming, though, with Mike just sitting there deep in thought, seemingly not having heard anything he had to say. It’s hard to stay put with all the nervous energy Nacho has going on, and he can’t help twitching and pulling on the label, his hands moving around on their own accord, and the sudden image of Jimmy McGill comes to his mind.

“Back in the day, we got a call for this disruption in the neighbourhood,” Mike suddenly says, when Nacho has already given hope for a conversation. He jerks in his place, looks at the other man. Mike is still staring straight ahead, his eyes unseeing. There’s something deeply wrong and disturbing in his expression, and Nacho listens attentively. “My son and I were on the job, so we went. Now the DEA had been giving us orders concerning this kingpin operating in the city, giving us his facial composites and suspected locations. This dealer had a kill count going on in the double digits, civilians and all. So anyway, when we arrive, it’s a junkie shithole, but there he is – the goddamn drug kingpin that half the DEA is after, and he’s waving a gun and screaming and threatening us and begging for his life and shitting his pants – a pathetic fucking sight.”

Mike sighs, shaking his head, and bites his lip the same way the kid in the photograph did. It looks much more tragic on Mike, somehow.

“And then this asshole points the gun at me, and Matty – well, Matty didn’t think, he acted on instinct, and he shot the man right that second, right in his center of mass,” Mike points at his chest, takes a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. “Killed the guy right there on the spot. See, the thing is, we don’t shoot to stop, we shoot to kill, and that’s what Matty did, and not a single fucking cop in the precinct would claim he wasn’t in his right to do so. It was a legitimately dangerous situation, the criminal could potentially kill me, and so Matty intervened. But, only, after the DEA got to the scene and they all looked and they all talked and checked and checked some more – it turned out our guy wasn’t their drug lord they were after. It turned out our guy was another one of those junkies – high on meth and paranoid, and the gun he was carrying was, in fact, a replica. Used it to scare other junkies into giving him their shit. Uncanny physical resemblance, but he was just a junkie – an _innocent man_ , Matty thought.”

Mike looks at him at last, and Nacho remembers to breathe. Mike looks older now, tragic, and his eyes are redder than they were ten minutes ago.

“Now I knew why Matty did it, I knew where it came from. He was just protecting me, and he was on the job, and there was this and that and bla bla bla. There were many reasons, and I didn’t blame him or judge him for a second. But Matty… Oh, he did it all on his own. Took a leave of absence from the force, hit the bottle hard, wouldn’t leave his house, except to go to this guy’s funeral. I talked and talked about it not being his fault, but he wouldn’t hear any of it. Couldn’t deal with killing an innocent man, and it was his first kill, too.”

“People tend to forget all the shit that the dead had done, we all tend to let it go. But I went and dug up every piece of dirt I could find on that guy before he died, every shitty thing that he did, put of a lot of legwork into it. Turned out the guy had several rape accusations, never proven, never taken to court. So I told my son, I said, “look at what he did, look at all those women he hurt, and would have hurt more of.” And it wasn’t sudden, it didn’t happen overnight, but Matty got better, he could finally justify this act, justify himself. It never changed what he did, but it changed how he looked at it, so he could finally forgive himself and move on.”

Mike zeroes in on Nacho’s face, his gaze toughing something deep in his very being.

“The moral of the story is that you did what you did. No one knows about it and no one’s gonna judge you but yourself. You had your reasons for doing what you did, we all do. The question is, can you find a way to live with it?”

In the woolen silence that falls upon them, Nacho hears the wild beating of his heart in his ears. He looks at his wayward hands that have been mindlessly scratching the label off the beer bottle, lets out a breath he’s been holding. There are suddenly so many things he can learn about Mike from this story, so many details that he is going to dissect and carefully examine, but he’ll do it later, when he’s feeling steadier, more adequate, more himself.

He thinks about Hector instead, thinks about his Dad, and the way he kept Hector’s drug money locked in a box like it’d offended him just by being near him, just by existing. He thinks about how Hector looked insulted by the less-than-welcoming way his Dad greeted him in his shop, and the words ‘I don’t trust him’, spoken like a verdict for a death sentence.

“So,” Mike says, drawing Nacho’s attention back to him. “Can you live with it, kid?”

Nacho nods, shutting his eyes, the lights dancing behind his closed eyelids. He feels so exhausted he could pass out right here and now on this couch.

“Yes. I think I can,” he says. And then, just to escape the somberness of this conversation, he adds: “I’m not a kid, you know. I’m 34 years old.”

“You’re a kid,” Mike says with a smile, his eyes lighting up somehow, all the tragedy of the last half hour finally leaving him. “And no amount of shiny watches and pointy shoes can cover it up.”

Nacho is sure he says it just to rile him up and tease him.

Strangely, he’s alright with that. He feels lighter, calmer, somehow, like the weight he’s been carrying around for so long has been finally lifted off his shoulders.

“I hope this helped,” Mike says, standing up. He looks at Nacho pointedly. “I’m going to bed. You can show yourself out.”

Nacho sighs, unwilling to move his tired body and part with the warm and comfortable spot he’s found on the couch. It takes heroic amount of willpower for him to make himself stand and straighten out. He feels like he should say something, explain himself, apologize – anything at all, but all that comes out of his mouth is a quiet and subdued “Thank you.”

He is immediately embarrassed by how sincere and vulnerable he sounded. Quickly, before he can embarrass himself any further, he turns and walks all the way to the front door, before Mike’s voice stops him.

“Hey, let’s not make this a regular thing.”

He nods, vaguely disappointed. Once outside he shakes his head, gathers himself, and walks to his car. It’s alright, he thinks, he’s going to be alright. He doesn’t exactly feel better, but he feels lighter, more hopeful and less desperate.

He feels like he’s got what he came here for, after all.

\-----

The feeling doesn’t last, though.

Hector shows up to his father’s shop four days later looking like he owns the place, and he goes on and on about how he is going to make his Dad a rich man, how he is going to make his business right with his drug money. It takes all of Nacho’s willpower to stay collected and visibly calm and keep his hand from reaching for the gun in his pocket that feels like an itch he can’t scratch.

 _It’ll be over soon_ , he keeps telling himself like a mantra, again and again, until he can’t think about anything else at all. _It will all be over soon._

Fool that he is, he even starts to believe it.

His Dad stands there, eyes shut and head bowed down, his hands balled up in tight fists where he hides them in his pants pockets, getting through the humiliation looking like another word out of Hector’s mouth would kill him.

It’s that moment Nacho hates himself with a burning passion he’s never felt before.

He’s always known he would do anything for his father, he’s always realized that. He was the only person Nacho ever loved with all his heart, the only person who ever loved Nacho back. He was the only good and honest man left in his life, someone so virtuous and sacred, that Nacho would kill anyone who would try and humiliate him, do anything to debase him like that.

Isn’t it ironic how Nacho is actually the one to cause that look on his Dad’s face.

“…so you’ll finally have more than enough to get a decent AC in this place,” Hector is saying, staring at his father with a look that sends chills down Nacho’s spine. “You’ll be able to finally make something out of this place.”

He says it like a challenge, daring his Dad to disagree, to speak up, enjoying the shit out of his misery and humiliation.

Nacho feels like crawling into a corner and crying. He doesn’t think it is possible for him to hate himself more than he does at the moment.

Miraculously, Dad manages to stay silent through this abuse, and Hector fucks off somewhere else, Arturo trailing off after him, and as soon as they’re out of sight, his father turns to him with an expression Nacho’s never seen on his face before.

“I will not do anything you’re so worried about,” he says coldly, his sharp eyes boring into Nacho’s with the force of a thousand icy pins. “I will not go to the police. Unlike you, I have the rest of my family to think about. But after this is over – if I’m still alive when it is – I do not want to see you ever again.”

He was wrong; it is possible.

And this moment, with his own father glaring at him like he is the sorriest piece of shit on God’s earth, he feels that there’s no coming back from this. This is the point of no return, and no matter what he does, no matter what he’ll ever do, they will never be able to move past this. There’s no way in this world he can ever redeem himself in his Dad’s eyes again, not after he’s put him through what possibly was the worst moments of his life, his wife’s death included.

He’s lost the love and trust of the only person that ever mattered to him, and the worst thing is – he’s brought it on upon himself, and he deserves every fucking second of it.

All the good things come to an end, and there’s always, _always_ a payback waiting on the other side. Nacho’s only now started to see the bottom of it.

Furiously wiping the tears from his eyes, he changes into his uniform and does his job. His father never looks at him again.

When the shift is over, he steps out of the shop and lights up a cigarette. He’s never smoked with his Dad nearby, but Dad has already left without sparing a glance in his direction, so why the fuck not. His hand trembling, he wonders, darkly, about how he could ever be so stupid as to believe he’d be getting away with all that shit forever. How could he be that much of a moron to think there’d be no payback for that ridiculous Gangsta Paradise type of lifestyle of his, no consequences to his lying, thieving, drug-dealing business?

He’s always been good at it – this criminal life – intimidating people, making easy money, not leaving a trace. He often fancied himself a criminal from the movies, too smart for anyone to catch, too cocky, too confident for any of it to ever come back on him.

Well now it’s come back on him like the hand of God, and he is absolutely not prepared to deal with the weight and the velocity of the staggering tonnage of shit that’s plummeted onto his head.

Cigarette barely holding in his trembling hand, he thinks, _this is too much, I can’t fucking do this, how am I supposed to deal with this, God, fuck_

He can’t deal with this. He can’t possibly go home and be left alone with his own destructive torturous thoughts and the image of his father looking at him like he’s something dirty on the bottom of his shoe plaguing his mind. He can’t go home and deal with this, he just can’t.

So he goes to Mike’s instead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Mike POV here, it was both fun and excruciating trying to get into his head. I hope you enjoy!

During the drive back home, Mike considers his next moves carefully. He should lay low for a while, at least until Hector and his men calm down. The nagging desire to hurt the man, hurt his business, and his pride is making him uncomfortable, nervous, like an itch he can't quite scratch.

He goes over the whole thing in his head once again, making sure he had been thorough enough.

Mike is nothing if not thorough. Matty had always made a point about him being too thorough.

_\--Dad, you know I would never do that—_

Not now. Stop it.

He shakes his head furiously, forces Matty’s voice out of his mind, cuts the whole routine going down the memory lane before it gets a chance to spread all over his brain. He’s not going to go there.

Hands gripping the wheel, he zeroes in on the road. There’s ringing in his ears.

It’s then that he notices a familiar piece-of-shit van parked on the side of a street, three blocks down from his house.

He bites his lip, rolls his eyes.

That fucking kid.

He parks his car in his driveway, walks to the front door, his hand gripping his gun tightly – a familiar calming weight in his hand – because he never knows what he should expect from Hector Salamanca, or if Nacho came here alone and on his own volition. While he is quietly stepping inside, it occurs to Mike that for all the talk and shared advice and little chit-chats they’ve had so far, they’ve never actually managed to hold a conversation without a gun present and ready between them, without suspicion that either of them is going to have to use it on another.

He actually likes the guy, as much as Mike can like another human, being in the state he is, and he can admit that to himself.

Mike tries to live a life that doesn’t involve lying to other people – at least when he can help it, -  and so he’s not lying to himself. He’d never waste his own time like that.

He can admit to himself that he likes Nacho, that almost-smile of his, which has recently been looking like he's forgotten how to do it and is just imitating everyone else, lost look in his eyes; the way he’s desperately trying to pull off the tough-guy act as if to convince everyone else around him that it’s really who he is, trying to convince himself, but Mike can see right through his bullshit. The kid’s not fooling him what with his warm intelligent eyes and soft eyelashes, and the way he’s looking up to Mike like he can take all his problems and his pain away.

Mike can sympathize with that.

Still, that doesn’t make it alright, though, the man coming here so often as he does, and Mike is going to make damn sure it’s not going to happen again.

He really fucking hopes Nacho’s come alone, _for Nacho’s sake_.

It doesn’t take him long to spot the kid sitting in the dark on the couch – exactly where he sat last time he was here – and Mike’s only too glad to let his hand relax and leave the gun in its place.

“I thought we agreed to not make this a regular thing,” he says by the way of welcome.

Nacho turns to look at him, tucked into himself like a ball of nervous energy.

Matty never looked like that. Matty always –

Stop it. _Stop it._

“Hey.” It's almost a whisper, a low rasp. Mike stays where he is and looks at him quietly, and there it is, that look in Nacho’s eyes again, starving-suffering-sorrowful, and it’s somehow making Mike feel the most powerful man to be able to see it there, to see Nacho so unguarded before him, so vulnerable. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have come here again…”

His head hangs low, and he lets out a self-deprecating little chuckle. Mike silently surveys the numerous emptied bottles of beer on the coffee table in front of Nacho, so the guy must have had a lot of time to kill while waiting for Mike to come home. Nacho’s hands are gripping the fabric of his jeans so tightly, Mike can see the whites of his knuckles. Mike should say something about the beer, about the breaking-and-entering, but he’s learned to make concessions a long time ago.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

It’s quiet, barely there, but Mike hears it alright.

This is not okay, he thinks, trying to calm his rising anger, what the fuck is the man thinking? Mike is not a priest, and he’s not a psychologist, and they are not friends, so Nacho had better get it through his thick drug-dealing skull that Mike is not a bartender waiting for him in his house with a nice bottle of beer and a whole lot of time to waste, listening to some Pablo Escobar wannabe pour his tortured soul out to him. What if someone sees him here? What if the cartel has put a tracker on him? So many what ifs and too little brainwork from this sorry little asshole.

“Well, how about _your own house_?” He demands coldly.

The kid flinches like he’s been slapped, standing up on unsteady feet and raising those deer-in-headlights eyes of his at Mike, and he looks like he’s trying to make himself lesser, smaller, like he’s expecting Mike to throw him out any moment.

Which, of course, Mike is going to, right this second. Making concessions can only go so far.

Except he fucking doesn’t.

Instead he stands there, frozen on the spot, torn between the sensible part of him screaming at him to knock the asshole out, and the overwhelmingly idiotic rest of him that takes in the sorry sight before his eyes – the way Nacho’s dressed in ordinary human clothes (no pointy shoes and bright shirts, like he’s trying to separate himself from the drug world), the subtle swaying of Nacho’s more-than-tipsy body, the way his hands are ever so slightly trembling where he grips them on one another, the way he’s visibly trying to collect himself before stepping back out into the bleak cruel world that’s out to get him, and he barely has any fight left in him to stand up for himself.

Mike curses quietly, shakes his head.

Matty would tell him to let the kid stay, to let the kid in; Matty would –

_Stop, just stop, oh God, just fucking stop it_

“What happened?” Mike croaks out, angry at both Nacho and himself for not putting a stop to this nonsense.

Nacho gives him a wary look, fumbles with that ridiculous leather bracelet on his wrist. Mike waits.

When the silence gets too loud, kid’s shoulders finally droop and he says: “My Dad hates me. I let him down, and now he hates me. He’s the only person that matters to me, and he hates me.”

The violence, the cartel shit, the smart shenanigans – Mike’s your guy, but Christ, teen drama he is _not_ prepared to deal with. He rolls his eyes, making sure the kid sees him do it, and finally takes a seat on the couch. After a beat, where Nacho is seemingly weighing the risks of staying, he carefully sits down next to Mike.

“Now I don’t claim to know one bit about your relationship with your father, but I’ll go out on a limb here and say he doesn’t hate you, kid.”

Nacho keeps staring at his stupid bracelet.

“He can take a lot, coming from me, but dealing with the Salamancas is the one thing he would not abide,” Nacho says, resigned to his misery and his self-hatred.

Distantly, Mike thinks the kid is too young to be feeling this way, too young to be this deep in self-deprecation and this weary of the world.

But then he thinks: Matty was the same age as him when he died, but he had only ever felt like this, because his own father was –

“Look,” he says loudly, and if he talks loud enough, maybe he’ll drown out the sound of Matty’s resigned voice in his ears. “You’ve disappointed your, man, I get it. Believe it or not, I know a thing or two about that. The advantage you have over most people, however, is that your father’s alive and well, and your little side business there was not for nothing.”

Unbelievably, the only thing Nacho seems to have taken away from his little speech is: “So you had a fight with your son?” he says conversationally.

Mike freezes, his hand clutching at the couch cushion. Nacho is staring at him with sharp eyes, and like a few minutes ago, Mike fury suddenly reaches an incredulously high bar.

“I don’t give a shit about what you think you might know about me,” he hisses, mind going almost completely blank, his ears ringing. Hearing this thug speaking about Matty like it’s some new piece of trivia he’s glad to latch on is insulting to Mike’s very being. He puts inhuman effort to keep his hand from reaching for the gun or worse, punching the little shit and proceeding to beat the cockiness out of him. “But ask about my son again and I promise you – Hector Salamanca will be the least of your problems.”

Nacho stares at him wide-eyed and mouth-agape, and Mike is pleased to see all confidence knocked out of him. Nacho raises his hands in surrender, looking disturbed at the notion of having Mike after his sorry ass.

“Man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,” he hurries to say, and he has at least the grace to sound guilty and embarrassed. His hands are still shaking, Mike sees. “I just thought you had a similar thing with your son, you know, but I didn’t mean to pry…”

“Yes, you did,” Mike cuts him off, cold. Nacho frowns, bites his already cracked bottom lip, meets Mike’s gaze with defiance.

“Ok, so what if did? It’s only fair, you seem to know all there’s to know about me, while I don’t even know your last name! It’s not just idle curiosity, Mike, we need to balance this shit out a bit, I feel like I’m talking to a ghost here!”

“There’s nothing about me that you need to concern yourself with.”

“Listen, you know I’m not gonna go after you or your family,” Nacho says, waving his hands at Mike, talking to him as if Mike is now the skittish animal. “You know that, right?”

He sounds incredulous as he says it, but then Mike’s prolonged silence must tell him otherwise, and the man actually has the audacity to look offended and even hurt. Mike snorts.

“I can’t fucking believe you would still think so little of me after everything we’ve gone through!” Nacho exclaims, indignant.

“ _Everything_? And what would that be?” Mike shoots back, equally furious. “Because as far as I can tell, paying me for putting out your partner hardly satisfies the definition of ‘buddies hanging out’. But then again, _you_ are the drug dealer here.”

“Fuck you,” Nacho spits out, jumping to his feet. “You think you’re so invincible, so smart, huh? That no one’s ever going to figure you out? Well, you can tell me how far off I am, so let’s see… you used to be a cop, pretty fucking amazing one at that, too, but that doesn’t make you into who you are. A lifetime of bad cases and breaking-and-entering and innocent Good Samaritans who die no matter how hard you try, that doesn't make you into who you are. There’s so much regret, so much pain, so I’m thinking – a wife? A kid? Must have been something nasty, but someone turned you into _this_. Someone went away and you stayed, with all your despair and your pain and your regret, and that photo in your book? Your son died, didn’t he? And it was your fault, or at least that’s what you think. So what, am I close enough, _amigo_?”

Nacho stops and stares, with the look about him like he’s already regretting he’s opened his mouth. His hand, which has been pointing an accusing finger at Mike, drops at his side, then flies up to scratch the back of his neck, and he takes a few steps back.

Matty wouldn’t scratch his neck when he felt guilty, he would wince and rub the bridge of his nose, he would put his weight from one foot to the other and not look Mike in the eye, he would –

_Stop it. Stop it, stop it stop it_

Slowly, he unclenches his fist, puts his hand back in his lap. In the stretching miserable silence, he hears Nacho’s shallow breathing, sees him stand there all wrought out, like a toddler cried out after his tantrum. The clock on the wall keeps ticking away without a care in the world, a steady _tick tick tick_ that sounds hollow, faraway. Nacho hovers uncomfortably over him. His eyes flutter shut.

“I’m sorry,” Nacho says somberly, tentatively lowering himself back on the couch. His hand hovers over Mike’s shoulder, not daring to touch. He waits a beat, drops it. “I shouldn’t have said any of that, I apologize. I don’t know anything about you or your son.”

His voice is low and scratchy. He looks tired.

“No, you were actually very spot on.”

He hears his own voice as if it’s coming from underwater. Distantly, he wonders what has got him in such a twist – it’s not the first time someone’s mentioned Matty in a conversation, and it’s not the first time he’s been confronted about his guilt. He dwells on that for a moment, wonders why this feels so much worse now, why he feels this vulnerable and open, like someone’s cut him raw and left the wound infected.

Mike is not the one who lies to himself, he would never be caught wasting his time on something so unproductive and pointless.

So he confronts the notion that what’s different this time is that it’s Nacho calling him out on his bullshit, like Mike himself usually does to him; that it’s Nacho who’s been looking up to Mike like at some kind of personal Messiah and who has just now come to realize Mike is no better than the rest of them; that it’s Nacho, who’s – without even knowing – been maintaining this illusion that Mike can do better this time, can turn it around now, can try and make it all better through Nacho, can fix the thing he couldn’t fix the first time around, can make Nacho whole, make Nacho forgive him –

But Nacho is not Matty. No matter how much Mike wants to see this relationship as a chance to redeem himself, Nacho is not his son, and there’s nothing for him _to_ forgive.

Nacho is Nacho, and the only resemblance with his son ends at their age.

No matter what Mike does, no matter how much he tries and how much he longs for forgiveness and for closure, it’s not coming. He can find a dozen other thirty-something males with morality issues, and they won’t be his son, they won’t be his _Matty_.

“Mike, hey, I’m sorry,” Nacho is saying, suddenly much closer. His hand finally touches Mike’s shoulder, warm and heavy and not Matty’s. He doesn’t shake it off. “I wasn’t judging you. I just wanted to know more, that’s all.”

Mike exhales a long wet breath.

“I’m sorry,” Nacho says again, desperately, and Mike knows Nacho isn’t willing to risk the last person who can stand him, the last person who knows what he did, to turn away from him.

Mike needs to stop trying to shift Nacho into something he is not. He needs to stop viewing him as a potential surrogate-son-Matty figure because he fucking well is not.

Nacho’s hand still gently gripping his shoulder, he lets his eyes fall shut, listens to the clock ticking.

Matty is dead, but Mike keeps living on like a fucking parasite, destroying the lives of those around him until there’s nothing left. The heat from the kid’s fingers seeps through the fabric of Mike’s shirt, and he wonders if soon there won’t be anything of Nacho left either.

\---

_The others, Stacey and Kaylee – really, not many else left who care – they still worry about Mike, or at least Stacey does. Can't forget him in those first terrible weeks, not getting out of bed, not speaking, not eating. Before they left for ABC, they couldn't do anything but watch him slowly destruct himself, and then one day he got up, shaved off his beard, put his gun in the holster, and went after them leaving two corpses behind, all trace of those days gone from his appearance. But they still remember the sight of him broken, and Stacey still has this look in her eyes like she’s afraid that one cloudy morning Mike’s going to put a gun in his mouth and blow his own brain out._

I know how you feel _, Stacey tells him during the group meeting, and Mike smiles at her. She doesn’t know shit._

You shouldn’t be alone so much _, she tells him when he comes to pick Kaylee up too soon after she calls him, it’s very clear to her he had nothing to do._

 _Mike tsks, shushes her, tells her_ don’t worry, sweetheart _, and_ I’m fine, you know me _. But he thinks that maybe she’s right, and he shouldn’t be alone, and maybe if he weren’t he wouldn’t spend so much time thinking about Matty in a coffin and Matty in his wedding tuxedo and Matty’s body rotting in the ground and Matty Matty Matty_

_But he is alone, and there’s nothing left – not for him – and Mike is nothing if not adaptable._

\---

_The important thing to remember is: appetite comes with eating._

_Mike believes that if he just goes through the motions, if he acts the days out, does his routine like he used to before all this happened, if he just forces himself to live, the desire will come along the way._

_No matter how much the bleak colorless days blend and mesh into one another, no matter how often he wakes up – or rather, stops lying still – and can’t force himself to open his swollen eyes, no matter how ashy food feels on his tongue, Mike believes it will all come back._

_Someday, the sandwich will taste like sandwich instead of bile and ash in his mouth. Appetite comes with eating. He believes is, because he has to believe it and there’s nothing else._

\---

 _He packs up one day, rings Stacey and tells her he’ll be unavailable for the next few days, tells her_ it’s work, sweetheart _. He knows by Stacey’s weak unconvinced_ uhuh _that she is not buying it, and she’s still paranoid he’ll drive himself off a cliff the moment she turns her back on him, but she lets him go._

_Sometimes Mike has to remind himself that he is not the only one mourning. He feels more of a scum than ever, those times._

_He drives back to Philly, walks past the tilted ‘SOLD’ sign into the house, where Matty grew up, lived and raised his own kid a lifetime ago. He stops to look at the concrete of the sidewalk, the word Matty forever embedded there in a crooked childish scrawl. He walks around the empty rooms, traces the pale lines on the walls where framed photos used to be, where happy faces of Matty and Kaylee and Stacey would smile down on him. He wipes the dust off the kitchen counter, looks around the eerie empty room, seeming bigger now with all the furniture gone._

_Maybe it’s not eerie, not really, maybe it’s just the way his old dysfunctional brain is reacting to the heavy, almost tangible ringing silence where sounds of laughter and music and TV in the background once were. He listens to the silence, lets it swallow him, drown him. He vaguely contemplates how long it would take Stacey to notice if he never comes back and stays here instead, the emptiness finally getting him._

_Then he picks up the lukewarm coffee he got on the way there and leaves – the silent house, where Matty will never get to live out the rest of his life, now puts him on edge._

_Vaguely guilty, he reminds himself that he is not the only one mourning._

\---

 _“I’m not getting into anything, I’m_ in it _,” Nacho tells him in the darkness of the night, the shadows looming around them. “I’ve got no choice.”_

_Mike feels like laughing and he feels like crying. He never wanted to deal with this._

_What Nacho doesn’t get is that he has a choice now. This is a choice. Them, being there,_ that is a choice.

_What Nacho doesn’t get is that this will probably be the last choice in this entire shitty ordeal he’s got himself in he’ll ever get to make. What he doesn’t get is that no matter what he does next, he’s now reached the limit of choices available to him for his likely-short foreseeable future. By making this choice, he’s effectively cutting himself off for any more of those._

I’ve got no choice. _There was a time Mike believed that himself, repeated it to himself so many times the words taste like bile in his mouth now. Funny what people can convince themselves to believe, things like_ I’ve got no choice, _where a choice is the only thing they’ve got left._

_Now Make feels like he’s run out of choices, himself, a long time ago, like he’s still simply going through those motions, still waiting to taste the sandwich, still waiting for something he’s lost to come back to him, but it never does. It’s too late for him now._

_It’s just so goddamn tragic that it seems like it’s getting to be too late for Nacho as well._

\---

_Mike has every reason not to like Nacho._

_Nacho is a cocky little shit who believes nothing and no one will ever get him, which to Mike is just so ridiculous and childish. He supposes it comes with the man’s youth, but then thinks he was was never this naïve at his age. Nacho works for the worst piece of shit in the world and lets that piece of shit pull him around. Nacho doesn't give a fuck about collateral damage, is too sloppy and not sensible by far. One part dangerous, one part pathetic, and a dash of impertinence to spice it up. He reminds Mike of Matty too much and not at all. But._

_Mike never wastes time lying to himself, so he knows all these reasons are a pile of bullshit, really._

_Nacho is not like Matty. If anything, Nacho reminds Mike of_ Mike _, and isn’t that just a billion times fucking worse._

\---

“The name's Ehrmantraut,” he rasps out after an eternity of painful ringing silence. “And yes. I had a fight with my son.”

For a long while that also feels like seconds, Mike talks. Nacho listens.

\---


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've tweaked the timeline a bit here, hope no one minds!   
> As always - enjoy and leave a feedback!

3.

Things don’t escalate and they don’t backfire; Nacho is stuck in this stagnation without a foreseeable end to it. He feels restless, nervous; constant paranoia eating away at him, messing with his head, as his hand keeps gripping the bottle of Hector’s pills in his pocket until his fingers hurt.

Sometimes, when it gets completely overwhelming in its intensity, he gets in his van and drives over to Mike. The man greets him with a resigned look on his face, like Nacho is a particularly bad toothache he can’t quite shake off. But he always steps aside, lets Nacho in, offers him a beer. Nacho has long since learned to be grateful for small things in life.

“I’ll send you a bill for all this beer,” Mike says once, shaking his head. He smiles, though, tiny and barely there, like the muscles around his mouth are atrophied, but it’s there and Nacho exhales with relief, sips on his drink and lets go off his anxiety for the time being.

He likes it there, in Mike’s tiny minimalistic house, drinking beer in companionable silence as if they were friends. Funny, how Nacho is in his thirties and the only person that comes to mind when he thinks _friend_ is this impassive, borderline-deadly old dude with a dead, forever-bored expression on his face.

But maybe Nacho just doesn’t understand that, _friend_ , so well these days. Only remembers a childhood of beaten neighbor kids in dark alleys, Tuco’s manic laughter, so unfitting for his young age.

He doesn’t dwell on that. He’ll take what he can get and he’s learned to be grateful for even the smallest of things.

\---

It almost feels normal at work these days, almost alright, with his dad working quietly at the counter and Nacho distractedly sewing away the fabrics. Almost.

But then Hector would show his face, and his father would spare Nacho a single fast look that says more than words ever will, and Nacho remembers. It’s not normal and it’s not alright. He steps on his pride, chit chats with Dad in front of Salamanca, makes sure it looks friendly and cheery. He puts so much effort into this, he can almost convince himself that everything’s good.

Almost.

But days when his father didn’t look at him like he wished the ground would open up and swallow Nacho, are long since gone and he has to stop deluding himself.

Nothing is good and ever be, again. He is deeper in the gutter than ever before.

He injures his hand again because he can’t concentrate on anything anymore. His foot going off the pedal, he is surprised to see blood dripping down his hand, a thick crimson trail. He is almost glad at the pain because that’s something he can finally concentrate on.

“What’s happened there?” Mike asks him that night, finger pointing at Nacho’s cut hand. He hasn’t bothered to clean the wound up. He half hopes it gets infected and maybe then it’ll hurt some more.

“It’s nothing,” he says, shuts his eyes.

Mike’s hands are suddenly on his, and he’s inspecting Nacho’s wound. His fingers are surprisingly gentle, the feeling that doesn’t match with the rest of Mike in Nacho’s mind, and he stays carefully still, allows Mike to turn his hand this way and that. He doesn’t remember the last time someone touched him. Worse still, the time where the touch wasn’t intended to hurt him.

Greedy for contact, he hopes Mike will take his time.

“Yeah, you’ll live,” Mike concludes and lets go of his hand. Nacho is struck with the crushing desire to hold onto Mike, make him touch Nacho again. He is fucking pathetic.

Mike gets up, goes to his bedroom and comes back with a first-aid kit. He pours alcohol on the wound, but Nacho keeps still and quiet through the stinging, focuses on the feel of another human being’s hands on him, suddenly light-headed and dizzy.

Nothing is good, and nothing is normal, just fucking look at him.

He goes home, lies in his bed for hours trying to sleep. The spot on his hand where Mike’s touched him is still warm and tingling.

He doesn’t get much sleep.

\---

One day Arturo informs him that Hector will be out of town for the next week. They are stopping all business operations for the time being, at least until Hector’s back.

Nacho feels he should be glad to hear that, but there’s only a dull ache behind his eyes. It’s one in the afternoon, but he closes the curtains, gets in bed and lies there, staring at the wall. He doesn’t sleep.

He would’ve been happy, before, would’ve put on his uniform and gone to the shop, content to know he’ll only have to do some honest labor with his dad for the entire week. He’d go to the shop, smile at his father and sew some fabrics, go through some invoices, serve some customers.

But it doesn’t matter if he’s there or not now, not anymore, because without the threat of Hector looming over his shoulder, Dad won’t even look at him, won’t welcome him into his shop, and definitely won’t appreciate his help in the first place.

Through the thin flimsy curtains, he can tell it’s getting dark outside and then light again. He never sleeps. In here, it’s hard to keep track of time.

Not that it matters anymore.

\---

There are more than three hundred contacts on his phone. It never rings.

He gets up only to piss and drink some water, before he drops back in bed again. He doesn’t brush his teeth lest he accidentally look in the mirror and catch a glimpse of his face. He imagines he is not a pretty sight right now.

In the stretching hours of unmoving idleness, his thoughts drift to Mike, and he wonders if Mike ever felt like this, like getting out of this room and facing the world would surely kill him.

Then he remembers Mike’s lost his son and feels foolish and childish. Mike has gone through much worse shit than Nacho can imagine, so yeah, Mike’s probably felt like that and then some. The difference being that Mike hasn’t been the one to bring said shit upon himself, though, and the extent of Mike’s shit could never even fucking compare. Nacho should cut it out, being a little self-absorbed asshole.

Still, stupidly and desperately, he hopes his plan would pay off already. He needs to make sure his father is safe; they can’t afford to let this go on much longer. He needs Hector to go away, before he can take Nacho out of the picture first.

But then, as the twilight slowly falls behind the curtained windows, he briefly wonders if it matters anymore. As long as his dad is safe, as long as Hector or the cartel are no longer a threat, it doesn’t matter what happens to him. If he has to die in the process, then so be it. He realizes he doesn’t particularly care one way or the other. His mind is dull and empty without any coherent thoughts at all.

He turns his face on the pillow, stares at the curtains swaying slightly with the light breeze from the window. His eyes hurt, so he lets them flutter shut.

He doesn’t sleep.

\---

On what might be Thursday, his phone beeps, signaling a text message. He doesn’t look.

If it’s anything important, they know where to find him.

\---

Somewhere between avoiding the mirror above the sink and chugging down the last of the milk from the fridge, it occurs to him that he hasn’t left the house in what must have been days. He munches on a stale biscuit he’s fished out from the kitchen counter, drags a hand over his face. He hasn’t shaved, and he can feel a beard scratching his fingers. He must look fucking disgusting. He should take a shower, but he feels too weak, too emptied out, all energy blown out of him, so he returns to the messed up nest of sheets and pillows and drops down.

The phone buzzes a few more times. He never touches it.

\---

He dozes off and on, drifting to a state similar to sleep and back so many times, it’s impossible to tell how much time has passed in between, if any, just long enough to wake up groggier than he was before. Surely, the week must have flown by already, but Arturo hasn’t showed up yet, demanding his attention and presence, so Nacho thinks – maybe not.

A knocking sound comes from the door, but maybe he’s imagining it. He is too tired to move, though, and he is too apathetic to feel scared or threatened. If there is anyone, it would be Arturo. Nacho knows Arturo won’t kill him, or at least, he hopes so.

Hope is too strong a word. Supposes, he _supposes_ Arturo won’t kill him.

He doesn’t feel any strong emotion about that either way. He’s had a good go, he’s made more money than most of the people he’s known and grown up with, he’s managed to stay alive this far. It’s been good, all things considered.

But all good things come to end. Nacho knows that now, he’s earned that knowledge the hard way.

Maybe this is his payback, his reckoning, for everything he’s done, everyone he’s hurt, everything he’s destroyed. This pathetic resemblance of existence Nacho’s been having the past few weeks – too scared, too paranoid, too tired. Maybe it’s time for that to end now.

Dad would learn to live with that, he thinks distantly, like the thoughts in his head are someone else’s. Like it’s got too crowded inside his mind, thoughts and feeling that aren’t his own. Dad will be devastated at first, will surely blame himself, but then he’d learn to live without the burden of Nacho in his life, without the constant embarrassment and shame and destruction his son never ceases to bring into his life.

“You kids these days,” a voice says somewhere above him so suddenly, Nacho is sure it comes from his own mind. He freezes, doesn’t move a muscle. “Lazing off in bed well past noon without a care in the world. Come on, kid, up you go.”

Nacho recognizes the voice well enough, and the knowledge only serves to bring the realization of just how unbelievably fucking pathetic he is come crashing down on him. Mike can’t see him like this, no one should fucking see him like this, hiding away from the world like a miserable coward that he is.

Desperately and ridiculously, he clings to his pillow and squeezes his eyes shut as if it would make Mike go away like a bad dream. It doesn’t.

Now aware of the concrete silence of the room, he hears soft movement, and then there’s a hand touching his shoulder, squeezing gently through his t-shirt. The hand doesn’t try to drag him up, doesn’t press down on him, it just stays there, a warm heavy weight.

Something gives, suddenly, something breaks, and there’s something wet and salty running down his face, his shoulders heaving. Belatedly, he realizes he is crying.

The mattress dips under the weight of Mike sitting down on the edge of the bed, and Nacho presses his face even further into the pillow that smells like staleness and misery. He’s well aware it’s pathetic and ridiculous and there’s no more way he could hide away, no more way he can hide this from the world and from Mike, and he’s left there sobbing for the world to see, and fuck, he should try harder to stop this or make Mike fuck off back where he came from, but his body is shaking and quaking with mute sobs, the pain almost physical in his chest.

“ _Jesus_ , kid,” Mike mutters quietly and even through the haze, Nacho can tell he sounds taken aback. He must really be a sight. The hand on his shoulder finally pulls, and Nacho is being manhandled into a sitting position, knees bent at an awkward angle. The light from the window – Mike must have pulled the curtains – hurts his burning eyes. He keeps them shut, because he can’t handle facing Mike, he can’t handle unscrewing his body, he can’t handle any of this.

“Look at you,” Mike says slowly, and Nacho is thrown back to the time he said the exact same words to Mike, the man’s deformed face peeking at him through the darkness. He unscrews his eyes long enough to glance at Mike, who’s looking at him as one would at a dog that’s about to be put down. That look must be what does him, finally.

He sobs out loud, the burning now a constant heavy presence at the back of his neck, like something’s hot and scratchy stuck under his skin, making it hard to breathe. He heaves, hyperventilating, and the burning turns into a searing hot pain everywhere in his body all at once.

Nacho has never known what it felt like to completely and utterly fall apart, and now he does.

Arms come up and around him, warm and firm, as though if being held strongly enough it would stop him from turning to liquid and spreading all over. Tears fall down his face, get into his mouth as he sobs, snot running down from his nose, and he’s never felt more disgusting in his life. Hiding his face in Mike’s shoulder where no one can see, he lets it all go, inhibitions blown away to smithereens, as he cries and shakes and heaves.

Mike holds him, silent and steady, and after a while there’s no more energy left in Nacho to keep on crying. He feels as though run down by a truck, body weak and useless and hurting all over. He melts into Mike’s body, keeps his eyes shut, as his erratic breathing slows down. He thinks of Dad, rising defiantly before Hector and all the king’s men. Dad doesn’t know any better, doesn’t know to give up in despair and depression because, haven’t you heard, Nacho’s world is falling apart. For Dad, life goes on.

He doesn’t move, can’t bring himself to because, hey, there’s nowhere further for him to fall, there’s no more level of humiliation for him to reach up to, so what the fucking hell. Mike is warm and _there_ , and Nacho’s long since learned to be grateful for small things.

He doesn’t have a clue how much time’s passed. He doesn’t care.

“Here’s what you’re gonna do,” Mike whispers, warm breath against his ear. “You’re gonna get up, take a shower, and shave. I’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

He moves to stand up, and Nacho clings to him, desperate to stay in this cocoon of warmth and timelessness, where he doesn’t have to think and remember what state he is currently in. Like being wrapped in a woolly blanket gone soft with age. He grabs onto Mike’s shirt, but Mike is relentless, and his hands gently unclench Nacho’s fingers from the soft worn fabric. He moves away taking the warmth with him, and Nacho feels the cool breeze of air from the window. He realizes it’s raining outside.

“Come on, kid,” Mike is saying, voice uncharacteristically soft and gentle for him, which, yeah, Nacho has probably provoked by being utterly wretched and pitiful. “Up you go. I’ll be waiting.”

And with that, he turns and walks out of the room. Nacho hears his footsteps down the ladder, along the shitty-laid floor downstairs. Then it’s silent again, Mike must’ve sat down.

Head hollowed out and devoid of any thoughts, he drags himself up and into the bathroom, takes his t-shirt off, his pants, his underwear. He can’t remember when the last he took a shower was. God, he must stink.

He gets into the shower, lets the hot water run down his back, and tries not to let pieces of him run down into the drain with the rest of the filth.

\---

True to his word, Mike is waiting for him in the kitchen, when Nacho stumbles downstairs on cotton legs, awkward with disuse. Mike raises an eyebrow at him, slides a mug of something steamy across the kitchen counter to him, looking at home in Nacho’s kitchen, for all the twenty minutes he’s spent here.

Nacho takes the mug, sips onto what appears to be undrinkably hot tea, burns his tongue immediately. Mike snorts loudly at him and bites his lip, unimpressed.

“Looking better for wear now, kid.”

Nacho runs a hand down his face, looks down at himself.

He’s showered and he’s shaved, but he isn’t proficient enough to be able to shave without a mirror. He glanced at it, and a face reflected back at him, that he didn’t recognize. He never wants to see that face again.

He’s checked his mobile, too, and discovered one message from Arturo, informing him of lack of any developments, and a four missed calls from Mike. His chest constricted oddly, seeing those.

He’s put on the only clean items of clothing left that he’s fished out of the drawer, glad that they were rather plain looking ones. He feels somehow self-conscious now, wearing his gangster clothes in front of Mike.

He looks back up at the man, belatedly realizing he hasn’t said anything back. Not known for his volubility, however, Mike seems alright with his silence.

“You ready then? Let’s go,” he says, and stands up.

He walks out of the kitchen and to the front door, and then outside. Nacho simply follows him.

They get into Mike’s car and drive off. Nacho wonders where Mike is taking him, but he never asks. He finds he doesn’t much care, anyway.

\---

They stop at one of those identical plazas with numerous cheap shops, nail salons, run by Vietnamese women, and a Wal-mart. The parking lot is noisy and lively, loud families and gloomy teenagers walking about, rattling their trollies. Nacho feels edgy and out of place, surrounded by so many people, and he looks at Mike over the roof of the car as they step out of it. Mike’s expression is an odd mix of boredom and amusement, and he nods towards the overly bright little booth just off the parking lot _B_. Nacho follows his gaze.

There’s a _Tacos & Nachos _sign, plastered at the top of the booth in awful curvy handwriting.

He glares at Mike, unimpressed.

“You down for some nachos?” Mike says with a distinct note of smugness and amusement, eyes twinkling. It’s a sight Nacho never thought to see, so he almost forgets to be annoyed.

“ _Nacho eating nachos_ , har har, you’re so damn witty – never heard this one before,” he grumbles half-heartedly, words coming out before they are fully formed in his head. His voice is gravelly and scratchy from disuse. Belatedly, he realizes it was the first thing he’s spoken in days.

Mike smirks.

“I knew you’d appreciate my sentiment,” he says and starts walking towards the booth. Nacho follows after him. “I was rather surprised when I didn’t find any in your house. Kind of expected you to have loads.”

“You realize _Nacho_ is short for _Ignacio_ , right?” Nacho says incredibly, unable to help being amused in a long-suffering way. “Not actually because I love eating nachos, that would be just fucking sad.”

He can only see the back of Mike, but he can tell without looking that the man’s smirking.

“I actually never eat those, it got too annoying too fast,” he adds quietly, just out of gratitude for Mike’s measly, as it was, attempt at humour.

Nacho’s long since learned to be grateful for small things.

“Tacos is it for you, then, kid.”

Nacho suddenly craves a taco, convinces himself for the five seconds it takes to pass Wal-Mart that his stomach wouldn’t handle this kind of food after going for a week on nothing but stale biscuits, instant noodles and water. His stomach grumbles. He ends up ordering one.

“What day is it?” He asks Mike as they return to the car with their tacos (and a paper plate of nachos for Mike, just because he’s an asshole). It’s then that it occurs to him he has no idea how much time he’s spent locked up in his house like a voluntary prisoner. The thought puts him on edge. Hector must be coming back soon.

Mike glances at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Tuesday.”

That’s not so bad. It’s only been four days, then. It’s not too bad.

“The 12th,” Mike adds, watching him closely now.

Now that quickly serves to ruin his appetite. He hadn’t left his house for a week and a half, _fuck._

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, refusing to believe this. Checks the date, swears again. What if Hector’s already back? What if no one could get a hold of him? What if something’s happened to Dad while he’s been decomposing in his bed for a week and a fucking half? What if Hector decided to punish his father for the son who’s suddenly gone AWOL and Nacho would never even be able to find his body, what it –

“Kid. Calm down.” Mike’s stopped chewing on his Taco, looks him in the eye somberly. “Your father is fine.”

“And how would you know?” Nacho hisses, heart galloping away in his chest. “He could’ve been – Hector could’ve—because I wasn’t there— _fuck—“_

His volume is quickly rising and he doesn’t even try to lower his voice.

“I need to go—I need to check—“

“Your father is fine, Nacho,” Mike says again like it’s the indisputable truth. Nacho seethes. “I _know_ , because I checked on him.”

Nacho deflates.

“When?” it could’ve been too long ago, things change, Hector could’ve still –

“Two hours ago. Just before coming to fetch you.” Mike says so calmly as if they are talking about the weather forecast south of Albuquerque. He forces himself to calm down, takes a deep breath. Mike’s hand is on his shoulder again, warm and gentle and solid, and Nacho wants him to just leave it there, period. “He is working in the shop. Salamanca hasn’t showed up there since the time you decided to have a little vacation yourself.”

Nacho blinks several times, exhales, his pulse still thumping away too fast. He doesn’t even want to entertain the thought that something horrible, something unfixable could’ve happened during the week. Something that would make it all pointless, something that would have made Nacho give up his only loving relationship in his life _for nothing._

Still, he can’t help being amazed at the fact that Mike put an effort into checking up in his father for him. Without Nacho even having to ask him. Without Nacho even bothering to be there himself. Mike just went and did it, and that’s more than anybody’s done for him in a very long time.

“Now finish your taco. Believe it or not, I’ve dragged you out for more than a little name-based pun.”

Silently and without really tasting the food, Nacho wolves down his taco. It’s small, really, but he feels so full as though he’s had a full three-course meal. He crumples the wrapper, throws it in the bin, and gets in the car.

Mike turns on the ignition, and they move on.

\---

“Why are we here?”

The place puts him on edge. He’s recognized it the second Mike stopped the car. There’s no truck this time around, and no screaming stranger begging for his life, but he recognizes the place just fine. He did give Mike the coordinates himself, after all.

Mike doesn’t answer, in that annoying manner that he does, just exits the car silently, opens the trunk and takes out two large objects that Nacho doesn’t quite see. He gets out of the car, looks at the long thin device, that looks like a large metal detector, Mike is holding out to him.

“What’s this for?”

Mike doesn’t say anything for a long time, looks away instead and watches the birds fly far away in the sky. He looks older, somehow, than he did a moment ago. Nacho observes the desert around them, the orange-yellowish mix of sand, rocks and burnt grass and twigs stretching out for acres and acres in all directions at once.

“We are going to fix something for a change,” is all Mike says.

\---

They work for hours, or maybe it just seems like that to Nacho, the relentless heat of the desert playing tricks on his tortured inadequate mind. They search and search and search, until Nacho feels like crumbling down on the ground, all energy gone long ago.

He’s desperate for a break, but Mike looks prepared to go on for hours more, and Nacho is too embarrassed to admit defeat before the man who’s probably twice his age. He wipes the sweat off his face, breathes in the dusty desert air, and goes on searching.

It’s almost dark before he finally hears Mike say, quiet and subdued, “Here.”

Together, they dig up the Good Samaritan. The body stinks like nothing Nacho’s ever smelt before, and he covers his nose with the sleeve of his shirt, eyes stinging. They leave him there in plain sight, and Mike says something about the job being done, them having done enough, _we can go now_ and _just one more phone call,_ but Nacho doesn’t really hear him.

On the way back, in the comfort of the car, Nacho feels fuller, more whole. He glances at Mike, focused on the dark road of the highway. He thinks about what Mike told him, that night that seems so long ago now, about his son and the guilt and learning to live with it. They’ve just dig up a body of a civilian that got mixed in the wrong game and got shot in the head for his trouble; who probably had a wife, a family that had no idea what happened to him. They can have closure now, Nacho’s given them closure.

_We are going to fix something for a change_

He gets it now.

“Thank you,” he says, voice loud in the silence of the car.

Mike glances at him, looks back on the road.

“I didn’t do it for you.”

Nacho nods, looks through the window at the darkness of the desert outside. Yeah, they did for the man’s family, there’s no doubt in his mind about that, but the thing is – Mike didn’t have to take Nacho along for the ride.

He’s long since learned to be grateful, though, and as he looks at Mike in the driver’s seat he can’t help feeling a swell of _something_ , grateful-painful-suffering-warm, build up in his chest and spread to the tips of his fingers.

“But you’re welcome, kid,” Mike says after a long stretch of silence.

They don’t speak after that, and Nacho is fine with that.

Maybe he’ll also learn to be fine with other things in his life, too.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is when things get a tiny bit more interesting (hopefully) and where the story also gets a bit AU from canon. The note that Gus left on Mike's car is now in Spanish for plot-related reasons and the timeline is altered to fit my ridiculous storytelling purposes.  
> This part took a long time to come out, so forgive any and all mistakes.  
> Enjoy!

4.

Mike doesn’t particularly approve of this new development, the kid coming to his house every other day with a lost and confused look on his face, as if it’s as much of a surprise to him to find himself at Mike’s front door as it is to Mike. He’s well past trying to point out the danger and the stupidity of such decisions, though, so each time he sighs heavily, prays to god this won’t _have to_ be the last time he sees Nacho, and lets the guy in.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the company, after all, and if there’s one thing Mike doesn’t do – it’s lying to himself.

Sometimes they talk about the cartel, with Nacho’s mood swinging between subdued and furious, and Mike tries to not bring it up much. Sometimes they talk about old movies, old as in Mike’s-youth-old, and Nacho tries to keep up with the conversation, all his smartass bravado falling off as he realizes he hasn’t, in fact, _seen it all_. Sometimes, Mike just makes him shut up and puts those movies on, instead; they watch silently, sipping their beers, and Mike observes the way Nacho grins and hums, his face lit up by the dim white-blueish light of the telly, darkness swallowing the rest of the world around them.

Sometimes they share stories about their lives, and Nacho tells him anecdotes of his drug dealing work back in the day when it was still fun and uncomplicated. In turn, Mike shares some of his own, the lifetime of police work a limitless resource of fun trivia about dumb cops and cocky criminals.

They watch _Rear Window_ one night, which, as Nacho claims, falls into the category of ‘too-old movies’, and Mike rolls his eyes and points out that classics and true genius can never get too old. Nacho looks at him with an expression that is way too warm and too vulnerable and after a long beat says, _yeah, I guess so._

\---

Mike never goes to Nacho’s place after that one time, and they don’t mention it, but he doesn’t forget the dark stifling room smelling of staleness and fear, the foot-tangling mess of water bottles and candy bar wrappers on the floor, the still body covered up under layers of dirty blankets and pillows, the electrifying air of misery and pain and suffering that came off of it in waves almost tangible, and sympathizes.

He remembers the way Nacho sobbed his heart out like the world has ended and his continued attempt to function normally in the wake of such a cosmic event being like a chicken continuing to run around after its head has been cut off; the way his body shook and heaved, the way his tears wetted through the fabric of Mike’s shirt. He realized that moment that nothing he could say would fix this, would make the man wholer, lighter, better.

Nacho’s been alone for too long. Mike sympathizes with that, too.

Digging up the good Samaritan was as much for Mike’s sake as it was for Nacho’s, Mike makes no mistake of that. In the never-ending pit of stolen drugs and careless murder he’s been digging up for himself, Mike feels like he is at the very bottom. And he’s just tired, so tired – there’s bone-deep exhaustion that never goes away no matter how much he tries to push it all out of his mind. He might have been the one to offer Nacho some comfort but truth is – he’s not that far off himself. And, well.

Fixing something

(and they didn’t even fix shit, not really; they _atoned)_

felt ridiculously good for a change.

But nothing good ever lasts, and the feeling is fleeting like a passing wind. As Mike drives Nacho back to his house, the horribly familiar sense of apathy is coming back to him, like an old well-worn shirt. Nacho gets out of the car but before he walks back to his house, he looks like he’s about to say something, probably something deep and meaningful, but he hesitates for too long, and Mike is so, so tired. He reaches over and shuts the car door. He drives away.

He just wants to sleep.

\---

He has stopped dreaming about Matty when he sleeps.

The thing is – for all the times Mike hears Matty’s voice in his ears, sees Matty’s face on the inside of his eyelids like it’s burned into the skin forever, recalls the memories so many times and in such perfect detail he sometimes can’t tell if they are memories or fantasies – the night dreams have been the only real thread connecting him to his son. The only thread to believing Matty’s in a better place.

Stupid, irrational, naïve, pathetic. Mike knows it all. Maybe he’s getting more foolish in his old age. Maybe it’s the universe itself sending him the signs that his son hasn’t died for nothing, hasn’t been wiped away from the world like he never existed, hasn’t been forgotten, hasn’t been simply turned into _nothingness._

Whatever makes him sleep at night.

And Mike hasn’t had a dream about Matty for weeks.

He keeps waking up groggier and more restless than before he went to sleep. He tosses and turns, stares at the dark window, listens to the sounds of cars driving by, dog barking away in the distance. And then he wakes up and it’s morning, and Matty never came to him in his dreams.

It’s a stupid thing to be so upset about, and Mike understands that, he does.

Yet it feels like another part of him has been chopped off and it’s never coming back and soon he will forget it ever existed in the first place. It’s another part of him that’s connected him to the real world, to the memory of his son, to the existing family he has left.

It’s gone now, and as Mike lies in bed in the dark, desperate and exhausted, he mourns Matty all over again.

\---

“Have you been… okay, lately?” Stacey asks him, looking uncertain whether she actually wants to know the answer.

Mike takes the time to look at her, properly look.

Her hair is neatly put together, her clothes clean and tidy, skin healthy and pink. But then the look in her eyes sets Mike on edge, and he knows that look. It’s the look of someone unable to go to sleep because of anxiety of what the next morning might bring; the look of someone who raises their eyes to the mirror and sees an unfamiliar aged face they don’t recognize, the look of someone who’s seen it all and felt it all and now has to live with the knowledge like a dead weight trailing after them for the rest of their lives.

Grief isn’t a linear path, and Mike isn’t the only one who’s grieving. He’s not the only one who is unable to let go.

It’s hard to think that Stacey — who had fallen apart, put herself back together, and built a pretty good life with her daughter from scratch – never really let go.

“Yes, sweetheart,” Mike lies amicably because that’s the thing he is supposed to say. It doesn’t matter that they both see through the bullshit. Mike’s not about to let himself unburden his shit on this poor tortured woman who’s almost like a daughter to him. She’s got enough on her plate without him spicing it up. “Just a little tired from my shifts, that’s all.”

He thinks of going to bed later and lying on the sheets with paralyzing apathy with the knowledge of never getting to see Matty’s face again. He thinks of Nacho probably coming in tonight, desperately clinging to Mike’s company like a drowning man on a lifebuoy. He wonders if there’s a particular set of emotions he ought to be experiencing at these thoughts, but it’s a pointless thing to wonder about and so he doesn’t.

It could all be worse.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be working so hard, Pop,” Stacey points out with a tone suggesting she knows exactly how much he’s bullshitting her.

“Maybe,” Mike plays along. He’s already growing tired of this conversation. Kaylee’s still in school, anyway, and he just wants to go home. “Maybe not.”

Stacey pierces him with a stare, opens her mouth to say something but then gives up on it and turns around. She doesn’t say anything for a long time after that.

\---

“What did you think of my Dad?” Nacho asks him out of the blue one night. Mike glances at him, noting the way the kid’s gone quiet and still with apprehension, as if Mike’s opinion of his father is of any earthly importance.

“Why?” he wonders out loud. Nacho’s eyes dart to the floor. It’s the only part of him that moves at all.

“Just curious.”

Mike eyes him for a while, hoping the man would drop the subject, but Nacho doesn’t move and nor does he say anything else. Mike sighs.

“There wasn’t much to think of. I only spoke to the man for two minutes.” Nacho is looking at him expectantly, though, waiting for elaboration, so Mike continues, reluctantly. “I thought he was a nice man. The honest kind, that wouldn’t try to rob you off your money. I appreciated that.”

Nacho’s face melts into a smile so warm and open, Mike can’t help but say more: “He seemed to know his business, too. Wouldn’t let me go on with that crocodile leather idea.”

Nacho chuckles, the sound almost foreign to hear. Mike suddenly wants to hear more of it. “Yeah, well, unlike you, he has some taste.”

“ _Yeah, well_ ,” Mike repeats in a poor imitation of Nacho’s voice just for the sake of making the guy smile again. “You would’ve gone along with it, if he hadn’t told you not to upsell me.”

Nacho chuckles again, the sound of it feeling oddly earned and pleasing, opens his mouth for an undoubtedly cheeky retort, but then his face freezes and he frowns. Mike backtracks what he’s just said. Fuck. He can’t believe he’s been that fucking sloppy, _goddammit_.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Nacho says, eyes turning to narrow slits as he stares at Mike. “Now how would you know that? Dad said it in Spanish.”

Mike draws in a long breath.

“Did he? I thought his English was good enough, you might be confusing it, Nacho.”

“Don’t bullshit me, man,” Nacho cuts him off, sharp as a bullet fired. “You speak Spanish!”

Mike looks away, bites on his lip. This is exactly why he is against letting thugs into his house and into his life, against getting personal with people of any kind in general. He’s kept it a secret long enough, the language too useful not to learn and too efficient once he did, and now the little fucker knows. Now Mike can’t use it to his advantage, and that’s only his own fault.

“I know a few expressions,” he admits after a beat of silence. It’s no use dragging it out any longer. Nacho snorts, one eyebrow going up.

“A few expressions, my ass,” he snaps, but Mike still can’t quite figure out if Nacho is annoyed or amused. “Apuesto a que hablas con fluidez.”

“Nunca se sabe lo que puede ayudar en un mundo de traficantes de drogas.”

The words feel rusty on his tongue – it’s been too long since he’s actually said anything in Spanish as opposed to listened to it. Nacho’s eyebrows go all the way up, though, and he looks almost gleeful hearing it.

“I’ve never thought I’d hear you speak Spanish!” He exclaims, switching back to English, for which Mike is grateful for. “Man, I gotta give you some credit, you are one competent bastard! Is there a limit to what you can’t do?”

The words are like a bucket of cold water rushing down upon him when he least expects it. Feeling the smile slide off his face, he wants to say _you couldn’t imagine._ He never wanted this kid to look up to Mike as if he was the most proficient expert at everything he does, like he has some secret guarded knowledge on how to be _right_ , as if he had all the answers to anything and everything. He’d already had one kid looking at him like that, and fucking look where it got him.

_A limit, my ass_

He wants to say something along the lines of _how about going to bed and actually sleeping,_ or _tasting things and feeling things like I’m actually alive,_ or maybe _trying to get my dead son’s voice out of my head,_ or even _keeping one drug dealing thug out of my house_

“There’s a limit on my _patience_ ,” Mike says instead, and Nacho rolls his eyes and purses his lips. “And you’re exhausting it.”

“I’m still pissed you haven’t told me about it,” Nacho accuses him with a frown. “Now I have to watch myself when I speak it around you.”

“That is precisely the reason why I didn’t,” Mike grumbles, tired. He feels out of energy to get mad at either one of them, too wrung out, too exhausted, too apathetic. Why does it even matter, in the end? So Nacho knows now, but it’s not like Mike is dealing with any other drug dealers or cartels anymore. As long as he keeps his mouth shut it’s not going to be a problem for anyone. “Need I even tell you that this thing here stays between us?”

“What thing?” Nacho smirks, the smug little shit – mirroring Mike back when they talked about the stunt they pulled with Tuco. Mike sighs again, shakes his head. He wants to roll his eyes for effect, but the little gesture seems like a waste of energy he’s got less and less of with each passing second. He is just so tired.

“Hey, now we can watch _Amores perros_ without subtitles!” Nacho exclaims, clapping his hands in delight. Mike isn’t sure if the kid is genuinely happy about this new knowledge or just wants to mess with him some more. That should be clear from the quality of the film. Mike’s heard it got mixed reviews.

“That’ll be a pass,” he says, getting up on his feet. Nacho has to stop him before he falls over and passes out, he’s so exhausted. Strange, considering he’s hardly done anything today.

“You alright?” Nacho says quietly, his steadying hand on Mike’s hip. It burns through the fabric of Mike’s pants.

“I’m fine,” Nacho looks at him dubiously. “Just tired.”

There’s nothing else to say, and they look at each other silently. He suddenly realizes it’s raining outside, the sound of heavy drops like a thousand tiny drums playing away in the distance. He glances at the clock – it’s half two in the night. He can’t believe they’ve been sitting on the couch for several hours, doing… what, exactly?

He listens to the rain, smells the faint notes of ozone and fresh air coming from outside the window, and a distant memory of his childhood comes to his mind of him – at six, maybe seven – watching the rain drops run down the window as he leans on the windowsill, his mom singing along to Buddy Holly on the radio, barely audible from the kitchen, almost fainting in the background. _Dinner’s ready, Mikey,_ she calls, and he slips from the windowsill, strangely bittersweet and confused by the reasons of it, and reluctantly moves to the kitchen, the rain and the air and the strange intensity of the moment left behind.

Mike’s tired, very tired, but now he knows he won’t be getting sleep anytime soon. Nacho’s hand is still on his hip, unmoving, and he stiffens, suddenly realizing they are standing too close, too crowded together with an ocean of space around them. He doesn’t move away, though, too unwilling to break this strange fragile moment between them, like an undue breath will pull it apart.

“Mike…” Nacho breathes out, like he gets it, like he’s experiencing the same surreal moment Mike is, like he’s trying to preserve it and break it at the same time. His eyes are especially dark in the dim lighting of the living room, and his voice is barely there, less than a whisper, and he looks uncertain and torn apart, as though he can’t decide between staying and disappearing with next tick of the clock. There’s something in his eyes Mike is not capable of fully understanding – something dark and truthful and raw, like an oracle has whispered the secrets of the universe into his ear and he knows, he _knows it all_ now. The sounds around them cease to exist, almost, and Mike is transfixed looking into his eyes, so full of this grand secret knowledge, and he suddenly feels like letting it all out, like opening a window wide and leaning outside and shouting his secrets out loud for the world to hear, screaming until his lungs are raw and out of breath, until he can’t utter another word anymore, because Nacho gets it, Nacho already _knows_.

A car passes by with music blasting out for the whole neighbourhood to hear, and just like that the moment is gone.

Mike steps away, feeling suddenly like he has lost something very important, like he has forgotten something vital, the thought of it is slippery, dancing around at the very back of his mind. He tries to catch it, pull it out to the light of day, but it oozes out like water through a sieve.

He’ll think about it later.

“I should… I should go,” Nacho says quietly, hand scratching at the back of his neck, and he looks like Mike feels – lost and confused and a little sad.

“You know where the door is,” Mike responds just as quietly, and Nacho is gone.

He goes to bed and lies with his eyes closed, trying to grasp the thing he felt he’d forgotten. He fails at it.

When he sleeps, Matty doesn’t come.

\---

They’ve uncovered the body, Mike thinks, they’ve pointed the police to it. They’ve done everything they could have done to make some pathetic sorry amends.

Yet the nagging in his exhausted mind never goes away. Hector is still there. Still torturing people, killing people. Innocent citizens, good honest bystanders.

“Pops, look at how high I’m going!” Kaylee screams at him from the swing, cheeks rosy with joy, hair flying around her face as she swooshes back and forward with glee only a child can manage.

Hector threatened Kaylee. Mike will _never_ forget that.

“Yes, honey, aren’t you a professional!”

Kaylee squeals and keeps on going. She could spend hours on that swing, Mike knows. That kid is stubborn and unstoppable when she wants something, and, just like her grandpa, she is completely independent about entertaining herself. She is never bored by herself, and if anything, Mike is just proud of that.

Hector sent those murderous cartel cousins to threaten _his Kaylee_.

Mike will not forget that and he will not leave it alone. He is just so fucking tired.

\---

The eyes of everybody present at the meeting are turned to him, miserable, haughty judging, and Mike doesn’t even know what’s right or wrong anymore. Matty is gone from his life, gone from his dreams, too, now, and he is just too tired.

“You wanted me to talk. I talked.”

A somber silence answers him, feeling like stuffed air and exhaustion and regret.

\---

The door to the meetings forever closed for him, Mike gathers his rifle and gets going. He’s waited long enough. Hector has lived long enough.

The shot never comes, though, the sounds of nature drowned by the deafening signal of his car. Feeling completely out of his depth, he slowly approaches the vehicle, moves to grab the little note stuck between the wiper and the windshield.

There’s a tiny message written out for him, just a few words that make his blood go hot and then cold and then boiling all over:

_“NO LO HAGAS”_

\---

By the time he finds the tracker it’s gone completely dark and his car is a mess of broken parts. He wipes the sweat of his brow and starts on putting the piece of junk back together. He is so tired, his fingers are slowly going numb.

He meets with the vet and after a while there’s an identical tracker at his disposal. He is oddly calm throughout the whole ordeal. After all, he has lived long enough, too.

He puts his own tracker in the tiny slot, and waits.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

\---

Nacho comes in through the door Mike hasn’t bothered to lock. If the cocky piece of shit is stupid enough to show up here now, God fucking help him.

“Hey, man,” Nacho calls out casually, squinting around in the dark. “What’s with you and the constant darkness, I can’t see shit!”

He doesn’t see Mike yet, fumbling around at the front door, and Mike doesn’t move.

“Look, I’ve even brought you some beer for a change!”

There’s an six-pack in his hand. Mike clicks off the safety on his gun, the clicking sound abnormally loud in his ears. Nacho stills.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he says, voice low and serious and urgent. Mike cannot see him clearly in the light from the streetlamp coming through the door, but he can bet Nacho’s hand is reaching behind him, where the gun is snuggled in his belt. “Mike, where are you?”

Mike points the gun at him, turns on the lamp next to his chair. Nacho’s eyes snap to him, brow furrowed.

“What – what are you doing?” Nacho says, eyes comically wide, hand frozen behind his back. Slowly, he sets the beer pack on the floor.

“Get out,” Mike orders simply. He is too tired.

Nacho stares at him, eyes burning a hole in Mike’s face.

“What is this?! What the fuck, man, what are you doing?!”

Mike bites his lip, blood boiling with rage in his veins. The fucking audacity on this guy.

“I said, _get out_.”

Nacho doesn’t move. He continues to glare at Mike, instead, defiant and righteous, like a goddamn soldier that’s been captured by an enemy. Mike glares right back.

“ _No._ ”

Mike exhales a long breath of wet air, lifts the gun a little higher, just enough to perfectly angle it at Nacho’s brainless head. The fact that he is not sure if he will actually shoot the guy or not –if necessary – makes him nervous and all the more furious.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

“You ratted on me,” Mike hisses through clenched teeth. The level of rage he’s experiencing might be a tad disproportionate, but he’s not about to go into that. He just feels it, allows it to guide him.

“What?! I didn’t – “

“You told someone all about me,” Mike goes on as if Nacho hasn’t spoken. “A new friend who’s not inside your little circle of trust. You fed them information about me that no one else knows, the information you’d been gathering all this time. Now this new friend knows a little too much about me and about the projects I’ve been pursuing, and I just can’t have that.”

Nacho stares at him incredulously, blinking fast. He raises both of his hands in indignation, gun forgotten in his belt.

“ _What?!_ What the fuck are you talking about!” he yells, then looks around and drops his voice a few notches.

“This someone left me a note a few days ago,” Mike says. “I was on my way to solving our mutual problem, when I was interrupted. And there was a note. _In Spanish._ ”

“So what, you think _I_ told someone about you? Are you fucking crazy, Mike, _loco?_ ” Nacho hisses, voice steadily rising again. He looks as mad as Mike feels.

Mike doesn’t reply, though, and Nacho straightens out, expression going neutral and closed off, and he folds his arms at his chest.

“You’ve got it all figured out then, so why not shoot me, huh?” he says, and even though Mike can tell he’s trying very hard to steel his body and his expression and his voice, bitterness in his voice creeps through.

 _Maybe I’m wrong_ , he thinks fleetingly, before he pushes the thought aside. He’s not wrong. He’s never wrong about this.

“I’m not in the habit of shooting people in my house. I don’t shit where I eat.” He raises the gun an inch more, holds it steady. “And I need to know whom you’ve told about me and what fucking game you are playing.”

Nacho’s eyes burn into him for a beat, and then he shifts again, shoulders dropping and hands hanging by his thighs. He looks tired, defeated, as he raises his eyes to the ceiling as if asking heavens for help.

“I didn’t tell anyone _shit_ , Mike, I fucking swear to you. I wouldn’t do that. Fucking think about it, man, it doesn’t even make sense! _Why_ would I even do that?” He demands, now looking at Mike with huge wide eyes, willing him to see reason, and Mike’s hand spasms around the gun. He lifts his finger off the trigger.

“Because I know what you did to Salamanca, and it’s a dangerous kind of knowledge for you to share with someone,” he says coldly and stands up, eager to use the small height difference to his advantage. Not that he needs it. “I don’t know the details, yet. You’re gonna tell me.”

“ _I am_ telling you _!_ ” Nacho spits out, furious and hurt and raw. Mike steps closer, gun in hand. “Just think! You know I want Hector out, you said so yourself – our _mutual problem_ , why the fuck would I want to stop you? He threatened my Dad! And who the fuck would I tell, huh? It’s not like I have people I can trust, _besides you_!”

Mike is not willing to think about this. Being mad at Nacho is surprisingly easy. He steps even closer, narrows his eyes.

“Another drug lord lured you over. Offered you protection, maybe. You told them I was after your boss, they knew what I was doing, where I was.”

“I didn’t even know you were gonna do that, Mike!” Nacho shouts. “You didn’t tell me you were gonna off Hector! And I don’t know how anyone could know where you were!”

“Oh, I’ll tell you how,” he reaches into his pocket, pulls out the tracker he’s found planted on his car, holds it under Nacho’s nose. “They bugged my car.”

Nacho shakes his head fervently. He holds Mike’s gaze.

“I didn’t, I swear! I didn’t tell anyone anything! Why would you even think it was me?!”

“They pointedly left the note in Spanish,” Mike says, clicking his tongue. If he lets himself stop talking, he will begin to doubt the whole thing. Doubt the cold uncaring facts. He can’t let that happen. “The fact is – _no one_ knows I speak Spanish. Except you.”

“Someone else must do, then!” Nacho yells, raw and desperate and hurt. “Someone else muct know about it, that’s the only possible explanation. Please, believe me, Mike, I wouldn’t do that! I know it’s hard for you to trust me, but I swear to you, I wouldn’t go to _anyone_ to talk about you behind your back! You are the only one left who I trust and care about, why the fuck would I go and do something like that?! I’ve got _no one_ left but you, and my own family wishes me dead, so please believe me when I say – _I didn’t do this._ ”

To Mike’s astonishment, he finds his hand dropped down along his leg, fingers loosened on the gun. Just like that one time before, he suddenly realizes they are crowded together in the small room, too close into each other’s space, Nacho’s wide eyes staring into his, eyelashes thick and soft. Nacho’s hands come up to clutch his forearms in a vice grip.

“Please, believe me,” he asks again, now quiet and despairing.

And, fool that he is – against all better judgement, logic and reason, – Mike does.

He is just too fucking tired.

Body taut and muscles spasming, he stacks the gun back into his pocket. As soon as he does, Nacho’s body relaxes, and his hands, that have been clinging to Mikes arms, come up to rest on Mike’s shoulders. His head hangs low and he lets out a long deep breath.

“ _Fuck, Mike.._ ”

He shuts up, cutting himself off, and just breathes, body heaving.

_You are the only one left who I trust and care about_

Mike thinks about that sentence, runs it over and over in his head. Maybe he should address it, maybe he should say something, while they’re at it?

_You are the only one left who I trust and care about_

He should say something, surely, now more than ever, with Nacho’s body too close to him, warmth of it radiating into Mike’s skin, less respect for personal space now that Nacho’s coming down from the rush of adrenalin, breathing loud and erratic.

_You are the only one left who I trust and care about_

He opens his mouth, unsure of what to say, but eager to say something – anything at all – to discharge this odd electricity in the air, but then Nacho lifts his head, looking positively wild, and kisses him.

Words that haven’t formed die on his tongue. He stands there, stupidly, unable to process what is happening.

He hasn’t been kissed in years.

Nacho’s lips are soft and bitten at, and he just presses his mouth to Mike’s and holds it there, his hot breath trapped between them. Then – seconds or minutes or hours later – he pulls away.

Mike is numb, faded, and paralyzed, and all sounds are too loud suddenly. A dog barking somewhere in the distance may as well be right against his ear. The music playing some blocks away is cacophonous. Nacho’s hoarse breathing is like sandpaper rasping over his very eardrums. The car getting parked next to his outside is rumbling.

He focuses on that, desperate to focus on anything but the man in front of him.

“Mike,” Nacho whispers, his hands gripping Mike’s shoulders. “I…”

Mike turns away, unable to look at him.

“Mike,” Nacho says again. His fingers are almost bruising his skin. Mike steps away from him, moves to the window to look outside. Nacho’s hands fall along his body uselessly.

“ _Mike,_ ” Nacho says with something akin to panic in his voice, but Mike is looking through the window at the street, where a man dressed in black is unscrewing the gas tank cap of Mike’s car. Mike grabs the large military-looking tracking device, turns it on, stares at the red spot blinking on the screen. He watches the man outside get into his car and drive away. He doesn’t look at Nacho.

“I have to go,” he says, and his own voice sounds strange and foreign in his ears. He sidesteps Nacho, picks up his jacket and walks through the door on cotton-like legs. Gets into his car and drives away.

His mind is vacant and the car is blissfully silent as he drives.

\---

Much later, when he comes back, Nacho is gone. Mike goes to bed.

He is just too tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviewing makes you a better person!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christ. Honestly. This has been a true pain-in-the-arse of a chapter - a bloody monstrosity of a chapter, even - and now, 8300 words later, I'm not even sure it satisfies me. Oh well. The endless struggle of a writer-wannabe.
> 
> Enjoy this part - it's especially long (not kidding, this shit is over 8k words) and action-filled. And there're also flashbacks. So, like, the whole package.
> 
> Do let me know what you all think - I've been negotiating with myself on how long I want this whole story to be, and I'd really like some input. Also - it's 6 am over here, where I'm posting it, because i've been up all night finishing it - *insert puppy-dog eyes here* - so i'm not kidding when I say I need reviews. I strive on them!
> 
> Seriously, though: enjoy!

5.

_Like most of the children who spent their childhood growing up in a third world country, Nacho develops a strong unwavering belief that America – this mysterious, magical place across the river – would become the salvation to all of life’s problems._

_It doesn’t. Of course, it doesn’t._

_Dad sells his chain of car repair salons across Puebla, so they can afford a tiny house in New Mexico and a tinier car salon in the cheaper neighbourhood of Albuquerque. They move when Nacho is seven, and America is nothing like he ever imagined._

_For a magical place that was supposed to take all his pain away, it does a pretty shitty job the first year round, when Nacho’s Mom gets ill with cancer. Nacho doesn’t get all the implications at the time, but what he does get is the way Dad’s eyes lose their twinkle the same way Mom loses her hair one day; the way the family mealtime turns into the silent somber agony of hidden tears and stolen touches, the way that he can hear his Dad’s heart-breaking sobs through the thin walls well past Nacho’s bedtime._

_He doesn’t get how this awful, horrible and terrifying_ cancer thing _could have happened to his family in this allegedly heaven-like land, of all places._

_Mom dies a year later. Nacho doesn’t get that at all._

_Dad is suddenly someone he doesn’t recognize – this old stranger who’s long since forgotten how to smile and looks at Nacho in a way that makes his deeply-lined face contract, as if he has a particularly bad migraine. The quiet_ mijo _is spoken as if each time he says it would be the last, and Nacho doesn’t get that, either._

_He suddenly finds himself horrifyingly alone in a place full of people, whose language he hasn’t quite learnt yet, in a neighbourhood his Mom had forbidden him to wander about, with a sad broken man in his house where his Dad should be._

_He doesn’t go to school for weeks after the funeral. Dad stays at home, and so does Nacho. The muted sobbing from the master bedroom is a regular occurrence now, and Nacho spends hours listening to his Dad weep, unable to fall asleep. He doesn’t miss school, and he doesn’t miss other kids._

_He misses his Mom. Even more, he misses his Dad._

_There’s a phone call one day, and when Nacho picks up, he recognizes Miss Santiago – his class teacher – and he’s glad to have a conversation with her that lasts more than a few seconds, which is more than he can say about conversations with Dad these days. He’s always liked Miss Santiago, and she speaks Spanish to him, so Nacho doesn’t feel alone and stupid for a few minutes for a chance._

_He passes the phone to Dad when she asks him to, and Dad spends a very long time talking to her in hushed tones. After he’s done, he turns to Nacho and says_ do you think you’re ready to go back to school, mijo?

 _Nacho goes the next day. School is the same – loud and scary and often incomprehensible – but Nacho suffers through it and doesn’t tell Dad he’d rather be left alone at home. He’d rather be home than here, in this giant building full of foreign kids he doesn’t understand, who crowd around him after periods and sometimes take his stuff and other times push him around and call him names. He can’t understand most of it, but he knows some of the words they call him, like_ idiot _and_ filthy _and_ Mexican _and_ bitch _. He’s heard those words from the kids in his neighbourhood and Mom would always be appalled when he’d ask her what any of them meant. He found out anyway._

_One day, when he comes back from school, Dad is smiling at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, and Nacho is shocked at the change. He can’t recall the last time he saw Dad smile._

_Dad says_ come here, my boy _, and Nacho follows him to the small backyard and there’s a puppy sitting on the brown, burnt-out grass._

He’s all yours _, Dad tells him with a joyous laugh that sounds alien, when Nacho looks up to him quizzically, unable to believe his luck. The puppy jumps at his feet, yapping loudly, tongue darting out to lick at Nacho’s hands, and, for the first time, he forgets all about the kids in school and the sobbing behind the walls and the eerie place his Dad takes him every Sunday, where his Mom lies in the ground._

_He names the puppy Rico after the character from the book Mom used to read him about, and, for the lack of any human connections, Rico soon becomes Nacho’s only friend._

_It gets easier, because now, beaten by the bigger children and left on the gym floor to pick up his scattered things, Nacho knows Rico will be waiting for him back home, incredibly happy to see him, tail wagging and tongue lapping at his fingers. Rico is not big, but Nacho is small enough for the dog to reach his hips, and he has shaggy brown fur and fluffy whiskers that always make his face seem like he’s laughing. Nacho loves him_ impossibly _._

_He is slowly getting a grasp of the new language, and Miss Santiago helps him a lot. She sits down with him after class, and together they go through the meaning of English verbs and nouns and adjectives, and she smiles at him like she is really enjoying spending her time with him. Nacho is really fond of her._

_But Miss Santiago isn’t there the afternoon when the older kids catch up to him on his way home and circle around him, looming over with taunting grins on their faces. She isn’t there to stop them when they push him to the ground, the concrete floor hard and unrelenting against his face, and kick him in the belly as he cries and begs them to stop in broken English._

_She isn’t there. However, someone else is, and his voice is loud and commanding, when he yells in Spanish: “Stop it, you motherfuckers!”_

_The beating and the kicking ceases immediately, and Nacho turns his aching face up to look at the new person, standing a few feet away from the group. The boy looks to be about twelve, maybe thirteen years old, but the way he holds himself makes him look much older, much scarier. The kids around Nacho all seem to freeze up._

_“Hey, Tuco,” one of them mumbles, and this boy – Tuco – eyes them back with a smirk. He isn’t big and nor is he tall, and Nacho struggles to understand why a bunch of older kids would be so afraid of this one average-sized boy._

_“Get away from him,_ maricones _!” Tuco says – orders, rather, in English now – with an air of authority, like a grown-up would. “Or I’ll bash your_ pindongas _heads in!”_

_The kids around Nacho disappear in a second, as if they weren’t there in the first place. Nacho scrambles on the ground, body hurting all over, and tries to get up. There’s a hand on his shoulder suddenly, and Tuco grabs him under the armpit and helps him stand, steadying him on his unstable feet._

_“Are you okay, kid?” He says, switching back to Spanish, and giving Nacho a critical look-over._

_“Yes,” Nacho says meekly. “Thank you.”_

_“I’m Tuco Salamanca,” Tuco says, and he sounds like a celebrity, his tone suggesting Nacho should already know who he is. “You must be new around here – I haven’t seen you before.”_

_“I haven’t seen you before, either,” Nacho grumbles, offended against his will. He is not new by any means. He’s been living here for a year and a half already, and he hasn’t seen this Tuco person before, too. He still regrets it after he says it, afraid Tuco will change his mind and beat Nacho himself, but Tuco chuckles and pats Nacho on the back instead._

_“What’s your name, my friend?” he says, and again, he sounds like a proper grown-up._

_“Nacho,” he responds tentatively._

_“Well, I’ve decided I like you, Nacho,” Tuco says with a grin. He gives Nacho another hard pat on the back, and Nacho winces in pain. There will be bruises later from all the kicking he’s got, he is sure. “You should have real men for friends, Nacho, not some pussy gringos, you understand me?”_

_Nacho nods. It’s hard to believe this cool older kid just decided to be friends with someone like Nacho, who still sits alone in the school cafeteria and has a dog for a friend. He can’t quite believe his luck._

_“Remember, Nacho,” Tuco is saying conversationally, “here, in this town, everybody knows who the fucking boss is. Everybody knows what they’ll get if they mess with the Salamancas. Salamancas do not forgive.” He narrows his eyes and leans closer, right into Nacho’s face. “Consider this your lucky day, kid. You’re not gonna get any better friend than me.”_

\----

With the heat of the sun and the humidity almost tangible in the air, Nacho feels almost feverish. Sweat breaks through the skin of his forehead, his cheeks, his chest, and he is sticky and moist all over, fucking disgusting.

_Mike knows I’m disgusting_

He takes a sip of his beer, almost warm in his mouth – the fucking shit weather – and doesn’t even try to shake the thought away. It’s been days.

He tried avoiding any conscious thoughts of Mike at first, tried focusing on anything else at all – even went back to the shop, bore with the cursing looks Dad sent his way, immersed himself into the mind-numbing manual work of stitching and sewing and mending and then there it would be, popping up in his mind, random and unbidden:

_Mike hates me now_

or:

_Mike will never speak to me again_

or, just:

_Mike Mike Mike_

And then he thought, what the hell – it’s good. Nacho’s been training himself up so he’s stronger, better, faster, colder. He needs this to remind himself why he’s doing what he’s doing, why he’s put himself into this, why he’s thirty-four and worries about killing a drug lord instead of worrying about the mortgage and heating bills.

_I’ve lost Mike now, and I’m not going to lose Dad, too._

In a sense that’s much more tragic, Dad is already lost to him, and Mike was never his to lose in the first place. Nacho takes another sip of beer and reflects on that thought with cold detachment, estranged.

People around the little table he’s sitting at next to an empty seven-eleven are hurrying off god knows where, busy with their lives and their things and their petty worries. Nacho observes them as one would the laboratory mice from behind the glass. He feels old, positively ancient, and the humankind with its measly attempts to function after the cosmic event of Nacho’s personal world coming to an end seems utterly ridiculous to him.

_Mike is gone, and so will be Hector_

He wonders what has been holding him back. Was it the lies he’d been telling himself about Hector and about Tuco before that? Was it that bubble-like delusion he kept maintaining about his relationship with Mike? Mike’s somehow managed to make Nacho’s entire world revolve around him and his tiny house, and Nacho hadn’t been the wiser. How did that happen? He only needed a friend, he only needed someone to be there for him, he only needed to not feel alone. How did it happen, then, that kissing that bitter old man felt like the most horribly organic thing in the world – like it couldn’t have been avoided – like a revelation from the universe itself, like the age-old wisdom befalling his tortured fragmented mind?

Maybe there could have been a Nacho who stayed in Puebla, Mexico, grew up to be a car mechanic, fell in love with a curvy pretty girl and made friends and used the name Ignacio and never met Tuco at all. Or maybe there could have been a Nacho who kept silent and never said that quiet ‘ _yes’_ one cloudy Friday afternoon, never got to see Tuco’s other side, grew up and _got out_ before it was too late and moved away to college with Emilio by his side, got married and had kids and never met Mike Ehrmantraut.

But mourning those hypothetical Nachos is a useless exercise and so he gives it up.

_I kissed Mike and now I’ll never see him again_

That’s fine. It’s good. Nacho wouldn’t really expect it any other way.

He hasn’t always been detached, he’s had his share of crushes and unrequited loves. Contrary to what the cartel wants to believe, not every drug dealer enjoys the girls who are either paid extraordinary amounts of money to be happy to see them or brutally threatened into it. Nacho has always been more uncomfortable than aroused whenever the girls would have been invited, naked and doll-like in their beauty, too fake and too uninterested in hiding it. No, Nacho has always managed to find his own attractions _on the side_.

There was a girl once, back before Nacho made it to become Tuco’s employee of the month, back when Nacho was a simple street dealer, and she was a buyer too innocent, too soft and broken, and Nacho just wanted to fix her, fix something for once instead of destroying and breaking and taking.

_We’re gonna fix something for a change_

She switched to heroin after a while, and one night, with a warm body pressed to his back, hot breath puffing against Nacho’s neck and face, she whispered _do it with me, baby, I’ll show you._ Nacho shook and trembled and then made his unwilling body move and get out before it was too late, before he let himself sink deeper in the gutter. He never saw her again.

And then there was always Emilio, soft eyes gazing at him, crinkling at the corners at a funny joke. Nacho longed and longed and craved to touch him and be touched, but for Emilio it was something he could never and would never do, and so they didn’t. Beating him up was the only touching Nacho got for his years and years of longing. Funny, how life just turns out like that, isn’t it?

_Let’s not make this a regular thing_

Nacho did make it a regular thing, after all. Every couple of years, steadily and inevitably, he would go and find someone who would end up cutting a piece of him away. A piece here and there, there was less and less of Nacho every time, and now a huge chunk of him has been missing and a million holes have been poked in his soul, and he can’t remember if he was ever whole to start with. But he recalls the way Mike looked at him, the way he turned his face away, and right there he knew that this would be the end of him, that the next bit of him Mike cuts away would be the last.

He gets up, wipes the sweat off his forehead, throws an empty beer bottle in the trash. He palms the back of his jeans where the gun is safely tucked away, and breathes out.

Two days – in two days he will do it, he will fucking _end_ Hector, and to hell with it. If he dies tonight, so fucking well be it. It’s not like he has anything to hold him back anymore.

\----

“Please, Dad,” he begs, risking to put a hand on his father’s shoulder. Dad recoils as though he’s been stung. Nacho drops his hand. “Please, think of our family--”

“ _I’m the only one_ here who is thinking of our family!” Dad hisses, furious. “ _How dare you--”_

“Please, Dad,” Nacho says again, cutting his tirade off. Dad lets out an angry puff of breath, turns his back on him.

Nacho sighs deeply, closes his eyes and rubs the back of his neck. His head hurts. He’s waited long enough for everybody to leave the shop but his father, who always stays until he’s the last man in. The shop is dead quiet around them, the only sound is his Dad’s angry huffing and snorting.

“Think of mom’s family in Galeana,” he says for the second time and feels like an utter scumbag, bringing it up like this. Dad’s shoulders tense even more. “It’s only for a few weeks, I promise you, Dad. Please.”

Dad doesn’t respond but turns around and glares at him with heat of a hundred burning suns.

“I’ll manage the shop personally, while you are away, I swear. Please. Just for a few weeks, until everything here dies down,” Nacho says. At least he hopes a few weeks will be enough. If he manages to stay alive through it at all, which would be a miracle in itself. “You could use a little vacation, too. And you’ll get to see the family!”

“You want me to _go away back to Mexico –_ like a goddamn _coward –_ while you and your drug thugs abuse my men and use my material suppliers as _mules_? Is that what you’re saying, Ignacio?”

“Dad, listen,” he exhales a shaky breath, clasps his hands together so they don’t hang uselessly along his thighs. “It’s going to be very, _very_ dangerous for you to be here the next few weeks. If there was any other way, I’d have never even brought it up, but there isn’t. It’s just too unsafe.”

Dad stays unwaveringly silent, but Nacho sees him start hesitating in the way his jaw works, his eyes flutter shut. He only needs to push a little more. He gets out the flight ticket for tomorrow afternoon, forces it into Dad’s clenched hand.

“I know it’s a lot to ask and I know you hate me right now – trust me, _I know,_ ” he swallows past a lump in his throat. “Don’t do it for me. Do it for the family. Do it for whatever reason you will, but please, Dad, _please,_ ” his voice cracks pathetically. “Please, just do it anyway.”

A long silence stretches out for what seems like ages, Dad just standing there with clenched fists, and Nacho completely still, hands clasped together. If this doesn’t work, if this doesn’t convince his Dad to go away, Nacho’s entire plan will fall apart. He needs Dad to be as far away from Albuquerque as humanly possible, before he can make an attempt at Hector’s life, and with Dad still in town he just won’t be able to afford to risk it. While Dad staying in town also means continuing to put his life at constant risk each day, anyway.

There seems to be no fucking option for Nacho any way you look at it.

“Fine. I will leave.”

Nacho looks up, almost unable to believe the words. Dad’s eyes are burning a hole in him.

“But after I come back, I never want to see you again. I mean it this time,” he moves away, shakes his head. “ _Never._ ”

And with that he is gone. Nacho stares at the door, which he’s walked out of, for a long time, unmoving.

There aren’t many pieces of him left to cut away, but Dad has just managed well enough anyway.

\----

Tomorrow, Nacho thinks again and again, like a mantra, like lyrics from a song stuck in his mind. He’ll do it tomorrow, just one more day left.

He doesn’t plan much for it. There’s no evil masterplan in his mind, no blueprints or diagrams or pie charts on how he’ll murder don Hector Salamanca. He just will.

He’d appreciate it if by some godly miracle he stays alive throughout the deed. If not, he’d appreciate it, too. He is well past caring either way. Dad is the only one he cares about.

_Dad’s gonna be gone tomorrow, and this will be it._

He takes out a mug, fixes himself some tea in the near-darkness of his kitchen. He’d drink coffee, but it’s too late at night, and he needs his sleep before the big day. Tea will have to do.

_Mike made me tea last time he was here_

Last time Mike was here in his house, Nacho wasn’t in the state to appreciate the gesture. Now he just feels dumb and young, like the five-year-old getting caught for trying to steal a cookie. He wonders what he would say to Mike if he was to come into his house again right now, what would he do.

But Mike is never coming back here again and Nacho should stop wasting his time on imagining the impossible. What’s done is done, and there’s no coming back from this.

He sips his tea in the ringing silence of his house. Alone, just as he always has been.

But then there’s a sound, quick and efficient coming toward the front door, and Nacho’s every muscle tenses. In a long practiced move, his fingers snatch the gun before his mind even catches up. He holds it up, points it at the door and doesn’t move.

Footsteps follow the sounds of the door being pulled open and closed, and then in the darkness of the hallway he registers a silhouette he would recognize anywhere:

Marco. Or Lionel, but fuck them if there ever is a difference.

There’s only one person standing there, which means the second cousin should be somewhere in the house already, and Nacho spins around frantically, trying to spot him. And bumps into the other cousin straight away.

Isn’t this painfully familiar? What a sick fucking way to experience a deja-vu.

“What happened?” Nacho says, and is glad to hear his voice come out low and steady, the opposite of how he’s actually feeling. “What are you doing here?”

Naturally, there’s no response, and did he really expect it any other way? The confrontation in their stance is painfully obvious, though, and Nacho’s heart sinks. Whatever is coming, Nacho might have been too optimistic about making plans for days ahead.

He turns around, looks at Marco eying him with a straight poker face, now standing at the end of the kitchen island. His face is dimly lit by a tiny light from the vent unit above the stove, and there’s cold rage in his eyes.

Before Nacho can even wonder about what this might mean, Marco points the gun at him. He hears a loud _bang_ , cacophonous in his ears – and there’s nothing flashing before his eyes, no feeling of deep regret coming to his mind one last time – and the world turns black and crumbles to pieces around him.

\----

 _Things go unbelievably smoother for Nacho after meeting the boy. Somehow word spreads around that Nacho is friends with_ The Tuco Salamanca _, and suddenly Nacho doesn’t have to sit alone during the lunch break. Suddenly there’s no one to taunt him after school, and Nacho learns to stop looking over his shoulder on his way home._

_Tuco rarely shows up in school, but for some reason, he’s all the more feared for it. Every single person knows his name, even the neighbourhood kids, and when Tuco does show up, people seem to go out of their way to not be spotted by him. Nacho admires him with all his heart._

_He doesn’t, however, tell Dad about his new friend. Somehow, in the back of his mind, he knows with absolute certainty that Dad won’t approve of this friendship. Something tells him to just keep Dad out of this. He wouldn’t understand, anyway._

_Life slowly gets more bearable with each passing day, and now Nacho is not afraid to walk Rico around the neighbourhood because he knows no one will try bothering him. For the first time since they moved here he feels free to wander around the streets, Rico running past him back and forth, and gradually he learns his way around the neighbourhood, gets to know the neighbours a bit, gets to feel like part of the community himself._

_Tuco shows up at his house once, and Dad is immensely surprised at seeing the boy at their front door._ I’m here for Nacho _, Tuco tells his Dad with all the authority of a police officer who’s come to arrest someone, and Nacho can almost see Dad frown at his tone, as Nacho frantically runs to the door to meet his friend. Before they step outside, Dad shoots him a worried and reproachful look, and Nacho feels vaguely guilty before he forgets all about it. Tuco leads him to the nearest soccer field, introduces Nacho to everybody there as his_ friend _– Nacho almost bursting with pride and gratitude – and together with other kids (all Mexican) they kick the ball for hours. When he comes back home, tired and dizzy and finally_ not alone _, Rico jumps around like crazy, trying to lick his face, and Nacho laughs with all his heart. He’s never felt happier._

Be careful around that Tuco boy, mijo _, Dad says that same night, face lit up by the faint light of the tiny old TV._ I’ve heard some things about his family, bad things.

_Nacho frowns and doesn’t respond. He knew Dad wouldn’t get it. Nacho has been alone for so long and now, when he’s finally got a real friend, Dad is not happy with it. Well, Dad will have to deal with it, then._

_He never asks Dad about those things he’s heard about Tuco or his family. He’s sure they are all lies, because Tuco is the best person ever, Nacho’s favourite person. There can’t be anything so bad about him, surely, because Tuco is so nice to him and Tuco takes him out and shows him around and keeps him company and protects him. Nacho will never in his life forget that, will never be not grateful for that._

_One day after school, when Nacho hurries to meet up with Tuco and this new guy Emilio that just started going to their school, he rounds the corner and sees Tuco beating up some American kid, clenched fists striking the boy in the face again and again. Nacho freezes, confused and suddenly so scared, he can’t do anything but stand there and stare at kid as he falls down on the ground, screaming and begging for Tuco to stop. Emilio is standing behind Tuco with an equally horrified expression on his face._

_“Tell your FUCKING gringo friends about this,” Tuco schrieks and punches the boy again. Tuco’s fist is covered in red, and there’s red liquid on the boy’s face, crimson and dark, running down his nose, his cheeks, his chest. Belatedly, Nacho realizes it’s blood, but he never knew there could be so much of it. He feels nauseous all of a sudden. Tuco swings his bloodied fist again. “Tell them to NEVER-“ a punch – “MESS-“ a punch – “WITH THE SALAMANCAS” – punch, punch, punch._

_“Tuco, stop!” Emilio shrieks, grabbing Tuco’s hand, as the boy is about to strike yet again. Nacho tries to see the face of the beaten kid but only sees red, so, so much of it. He feels dizzy, alienated to the scene in front of him, as if someone else is watching it through his eyes. “Please, Tuco, you’ll kill him!”_

_Tuco breathes out, surveys the sight before him – the boy on the ground is not even moving anymore. He looks like he’s not even breathing anymore. Slowly, he rises to his feet, kicks the boy in the ribs one more time, turns to face Emilio. None of them has seen Nacho yet, he realizes distantly and hides back around the corner. His sweaty hands are shaking, and his heart is beating wildly in his ears._

_It occurs to him that he doesn’t want to go over and face Tuco right now. Quietly, he turns on his heels and runs home as fast as his feet will carry him. He doesn’t leave home again that afternoon._

_Tuco doesn’t show up at school for days after that, and everything is quiet. Nacho does his best to avoid thinking about him and about the boy begging for his life at Tuco’s feet, and he almost succeeds. That boy doesn’t show up to school, either._

_On a dark stormy Friday, just before Nacho leaves the school grounds, someone grabs him on the shoulder and Nacho panics, turning around wildly, heart starting to gallop away in his chest. It’s only Miss Santiago, and Nacho forces himself to relax. He doesn’t even know who he was expecting._

_“Nacho, can I please talk to you about something?” She asks him kindly and courteously, and he nods because, of course, she can. Nacho’s always liked Miss Santiago and there’s few things he wouldn’t do if she asked him._

_She leads him back into her classroom, sits him down and then sits on a chair across the desk. She looks very tired, Nacho notices, pale and_ _sweaty_ _, like his Dad does when Nacho wakes him up from another nightmare. He doesn’t like that look on her._

_“Nacho, I need you to be very grown-up for this conversation, can you do that for me?” she asks him very urgently, and he nods again, uneasy. From the corner of his eye he sees the face of Principal Reynolds looking at them through the little window in the door, and suddenly he has a hunch about where this conversation is going._

_They sit there for a long time, Nacho listening to all the facts Miss Santiago is presenting to him._ It’s Kyle Rogers from the third grade _, she is saying with a tone Dad uses when he talks about Mom. Nacho knows who Kyle Rogers is. Has been trying really hard to forget. His mind goes blanc on him after a while, but he still hears some of it, separate words making it through to him, and there’s_ beaten up _and_ comatose _and_ broken skull _and_ grieving parents _and_ someone responsible _and then –_

Tuco Salamanca                                                               

_Nacho listens closely now, and there are more and more words about being an adult and helping those in need and about justice and responsibility. Nacho stays quiet through all of it, something vile and bitter stuck in his throat._

_“Nacho, I know you and Tuco are friends, but I need to know –_ we _need to know, Kyle’s parents and principal Reynolds, too – we need to know if that someone who did this to Kyle… Nacho, was this person_ Tuco Salamanca _?”_

_Nacho swallows past the bile in his throat, tongue feeling like sandpaper in his mouth. He thinks of Tuco and the soccer games and all the kids Tuco introduced him to. He remembers the way Tuco helped him off the ground that first time they met and offered Nacho the only thing he craved most of all – friendship, and the way Nacho has felt so wonderful about it ever since._

_Ever since, up to that one afternoon he witnessed Tuco nearly kill a boy with his bare hands._

_He thinks about that, then, recalls the way his heart sank and his palms got sweaty as he watched Tuco strike Kyle again and again to the accompaniment of Emilio’s terrified screams. Remembers the way he squirmed, trying to maintain the illusion and keep his breath even, as he desperately tried to make himself believe that what Tuco was doing_ was alright, that Kyle boy must have deserved it _. His Dad’s words come to mind, unbidden,_ I’ve heard some things about his family, bad things _, and Nacho may be far enough gone to fall for it, but Tuco was never able to fool Dad._

_What would they all say about me, Nacho wonders and feels like crying. Because whatever Tuco and his new friends might say about him, however they might treat him, Dad has never raised Nacho to lie, and before the thoughts are even fully formed in his head, Nacho already knows what he is going to say._

_“_ Yes _.” And there it is, less than a whisper._

_Miss Santiago looks pained. There is no relief on her face._

_“Thank you, Nacho. You are a very good boy, and you’ve done a very good thing today,” she says with a tiny sad smile._

_And there is that. Nacho is free to leave and so he does. Principal Reynolds nods at him grimly as he walks him by._

_Nacho goes straight home after that. He feels exhausted and guilty and drenched out, and as he lies in bed, Rico curls up next to him in a comforting ball of warm fur. He strokes him behind the ears, mindlessly, unable to truly think about what his one simple word today might do to his future._

_\----_

This pain is not survivable.

Everything hurts, a cacophony of screaming neurons from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers. Everything is black and red before his eyes, and he can’t even tell if his eyes are open or shut anymore. He thinks he’s crying. He might be screaming. This pain is the worst he has ever experienced in his life.

This pain is not survivable.

Body feeling as if it’s on fire, as if it’s being crushed by a freight train and pulled apart at the same time, every sound intensifies. Someone whimpers loudly in his ears, and belatedly, he realizes the sound must have come from him. He tries to hold it back, doesn’t know if he’s succeeding.

Someone is talking over him, or at least it sounds like voices coming out from somewhere above him or underneath him. Nacho can’t tell if he’s vertical or horizontal anymore, and he doesn’t know which way is up or down. Hands are touching his body all over, hurting him even more, which is a wonder, because he is in so much pain already there can’t possibly be any more of it.

This pain is not survivable.

Something is being taken from his lax fingers – _his gun_ , his barely-conscious mind supplies – and then something else is lifted off if him, something that makes a vague clicky noise.

 _“…Heart pills…_ ”

The sounds are coming as if from underwater. Or maybe he’s the one who’s underwater, and he must be drowning. It’s getting impossible to breathe, and he is choking. There are footsteps, followed down by a hollow sound of door being closed. He must be alone now. He should be thankful for his privacy, or maybe he should be scared but there’s nothing.

This pain is not survivable.

Somewhere between drifting in and out of consciousness, Nacho realizes he is dying. He can only hope to slip into death quietly, without any more pain coming his way, without anyone seeing. He’s trying to hurry the process along. Willing himself to black out, to fade in and out of consciousness, hoping thinly that this time he’ll be gone for good.

Time passes – minutes? Hours? Days? He doesn’t know. Doesn’t care much.

When he’s conscious he fantasizes about Mike coming here to find him and rescue him. He tries to imagine what Mike’s hands would feel like on his face, on his chest, on his ribs. He allows himself to have this in his final moments, but his mind is coming up with distorted images, almost black-and-white and blurry like on an old broken TV, and he gives up, succumbs to the pain.

This pain is not survivable.

It seems to him that he’s spending longer and longer blacked out. It shouldn’t be too much longer, then.

He can almost feel himself slipping away and then there they are: grief, fear, betrayal, humiliation, loss. He hopes they don’t follow him wherever he’s going.

But then rough hands are shaking him up, manhandling him, and he is being moved. He almost cries with desperation, wants to open his uncoordinating mouth and plead: _no, please, just leave me, I was almost there._

But the hands are unrelenting, and they are dragging him somewhere until they stop, and then his body hits a hard surface. Hands disappear, but his body is moving, or the ground is moving, Nacho can’t tell.

There’s a sound of something roaring loudly, and he realizes he’s inside a car. He’s being driven somewhere.

Death isn’t quite there yet, but as he closes his eyes he hopes it’s going come for him soon enough.

This pain is not survivable.

_\----_

_Tuco is absent from school the next Monday and then Tuesday, and the entire week after that. Nacho is walking around on eggshells, though, wary and paranoid, feeling very much like the days before Tuco walked into his life. He doesn’t know what to expect and when to expect it, and the guilt is eating him up a bit every day._

_He misses his Mom more than ever. Mom would know what to do, she always did._

_One hot sunny Thursday Nacho walks home in the heat of an unusually sultry day, and as he turns into the alley two blocks from home, Tuco is there._

_“You little FUCKER,” Tuco screams at him, and Nacho stops dead in his tracks, absolutely mortified. He stares up at the boy who looks positively murderous in his rage, and only then does he notice another kid behind Tuco. He looks about sixteen, tall and broad and scarily muscular. He looks like they can snap Nacho like a twig._

_He takes a step back, then another one and another, until his back hits something firm and solid. He turns around, and finds himself leaning onto another person – a guy – who looks just like the one next to Tuco, so – brothers, then._

_The guy is blocking out the only way for Nacho to escape, and so he swallows the excess saliva in his mouth, and faces Tuco again under the heat of the punishing son._

_“Tuco, I’m --”_

_“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Tuco yells, and Nacho bites on his tongue. His heart is beating loudly in his ears and his hands are trembling. He is small for his age, but he is especially tiny compared to the three boys surrounding him. There is no way he can struggle them. “You shut up, you little faggot traitor, and listen to me,” Tuco says much quieter. He is glaring at Nacho the way he was glaring at Kyle Rogers, and Nacho’s lip trembles. “What did I tell you when we first met, huh?”_

_Nacho just looks at him, eyes stinging and heart thumping._

_“ANSWER ME!!”_

_“You… you said, you said that…” His voice comes out tiny and shaky and pathetic, and, to his horror, tears start welling up in his eyes, and he blinks them away furiously. “That no one in this town messes with the Salamancas.”_

_“That’s right,” Tuco exclaims, delighted. He and the other guy exchange a pleased look. “What else?”_

_“You said, everybody here knows who the boss is,” Nacho babbles in a shaky voice, the heat of the body behind him seeping into his back._

_“And?”_

_“And that…” he pauses to gulp some air, swallows the snot in the back of his nose, “that the Salamancas do not forgive.”_

_“That’s right, Nacho,” Tuco says again and grins. “We do not.”_

_“Please, Tuco,” Nacho chatters desperately, scared and guilty and intense, “Please, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Tuco, I never should have said anything!”_

_“No you fucking shouldn’t have, you little shit!” Tuco shouts and comes a bit closer. “You know what we do with little traitors like you?”_

_“Tuco, please…” Nacho babbles on, but then there are hands gripping his shoulders from behind, strong and unmoving, holding him in place. “I’m sorry, I’ll never say anything to anyone again, I swear, please…”_

_“I know you won’t,” Tuco says, eerily calm, and turns around to look at the big guy. Only then does Nacho see a big sack in the guy’s hands. Something inside the bag moves and thrashes. Nacho’s heart stops._

_Then the guy reaches inside and pulls Rico out by his withers._

_“RICO!” Nacho yells, pure horror making him thrash wildly as another guy holds him easily in place. “RICO! RICO, NO!”_

_“You ever gonna rat me out again?” Tuco asks him calmly._

_“NO! I WON’T, I SWEAR, PLEASE, TUCO, I SWEAR!!”_

_There is a waterfall of tears and snot streaming down his face, running down his chin as he screams and thrashes violently and sobs with his whole body. His heart feels like it’s going to explode any second, blood turned to ice in his veins, and his whole vision zeroes in on his dog – his favorite creature in the world, his best and only friend in his life – flouncing around in the man’s iron grip._

_“_ PLEASE, TUCO, PLEASE, PLEASE!!” _He wails, and Rico whimpers pitifully. Nacho chokes on his snot, throws himself forward violently, and the guy behind him kicks him in the back of his knees. Nacho flails down, almost falling, but the guy’s hands keep him hanging mid-air. Rico tries to pull out again, whines and whimpers and squeals, as Nacho chokes and chokes and chokes. If Tuco only lets Rico go, please, God, please, let Rico go, and Nacho will do anything, will be anything, anything Tuco wants, just please let Rico go, please “_ PLEASE, LET HIM GO, TUCO, LET HIM GO, I BEG YOU!”

_Tuco comes very close into Nacho’s space, crouches down so they’re at the same level._

_“From now on you do what I tell you, or I will find another way to teach you a lesson, fucker,” he whispers into Nacho’s face, voice cacophonous in his ears. “_ Salamancas do not forgive _”_

 _And then his brother’s hands come around Rico’s neck – there’s a loud, horrifying_ crack _– and Rico never moves again._

\----                       

Nacho is shaken wildly awake, and he feels deceived, cheated, at still being able to do so. Not dead yet, then.

There’s something cold hitting him in the face, and he gulps and chokes, and his head clears a bit. He forces his eyes open, tries to focus on his surroundings, as someone’s hand keeps him uptight.

He’s in the desert and it is almost dawn. There are figures around him, the silhouettes visible in the bluish-pink pastel light coming from the horizon. He squints at them, recognizing the cousins and, of course, don fucking Hector. The person forcing him to sit and not fall sideways must be Arturo then. He sees a car and a van standing by the side of the road.

“You are awake, wonderful,” Hector says. The wind carries his words away, but Nacho still hears him. “I was worried for a while there, that you wouldn’t quite make it… to this conversation.”

He falls silent as if expecting Nacho to say something back. Nacho doesn’t even try.

“I hope this will be somewhat enlightening for both of us,” Hector is saying. “See, I was quite surprised when my boys here told me about Papi preparing to leave this wonderful country. And that it was you, of all my _employees_ , who bought him the ticket,” Hector waves his hands around, staring at Nacho with an expression almost friendly. “I thought, why would our dear Nacho want Papi away when I specifically told him I needed his little business? Huh? You want to make a comment, Nacho?”

Nacho’s eyes flutter shut, pain thrumming in his ribs. They must have given him something, because the pain is slighter, somewhat less grave than it was before.

How fucking stupid of him to hope he could get Dad away, how fucking naïve. Of course they must have been watching them both, watching Nacho’s every move, and there he goes and buys his father a ticket to Mexico just as Hector is at his most suspicious. What a fucking joke. Of course, they wouldn’t let his go. Of course, they would know.

After all, the best way to predict someone’s actions is to look at their past actions. Nacho supposes it applies to all of them here.

Why couldn’t he have just died? Why couldn’t he have just drifted out and faded out, evaporated like water under the sun? Why is it so, that instead of just letting him die in peace they’ve turned Nacho into a cosmic punching bag, over and over again?

He could never run, he could never fucking escape. Wherever he goes, there he is. Wherever he does, death and misery follow. There is no getting away with it, and he should have learnt that from the start.

“Very silent you are, boy, very defiant. But that’s ok,” Hector says, and then reaches into his jacket and pulls out a familiar plastic bottle of pills. Nacho would recognize it anywhere – he’s been the one carrying it around for weeks, his fingers memorizing the feel and the texture of it. It may have as well weighted a ton for all he constantly felt it dragging him down, the weight of it crushing him from his own pocket, burning and calling for attention. There it is now, looking small and insignificant in Hector’s hand. “This is funny, how these pills look just like my medicine. Isn’t it funny, boys?” He addresses the cousins. They nod, simultaneously and silently. “What did you plan on doing with them, boy? Did you want to, maybe, switch these pills with my heart medicine? Huh?”

Nacho weighs the risks of lying, of trying to say that these are the spare pills he’s been carrying around just in case. But before he can give it any thought, he knows that attempt would be nothing but pathetic and fruitless. Look at him – he’s been shot and is now bound in the desert.

This is not a negotiation. This is an execution.

There’s no coming back from this.

“He’s very quiet today, isn’t he?” Hector says, turning to the cousins. He shrugs, then turns back to Nacho with a grin slowly stretching his lips. He looks dangerous, feral. Nacho’s body spasms, hands shaking, as he dreads whatever is coming next. “Bet I can still get a few words out of you, what do you think?”

Nacho just stares at him through watery eyes, eyelids too swollen and heavy. “Come on, boys,” Hector calls to the cousins loudly. “Bring out the motivator!”

Nacho’s heart stops, skips a beat, and then goes into a galloping race against his ribs.

Frozen on the spot, he watches as one of the cousins walks back to the van, opens the doors and drags out someone’s body – bound and gagged – back to them.

Everything dies down. The world around him shakes and spins and then stops, tilted. He thinks he is floating in the air, or maybe there’s no air left at all, all oxygen suddenly sucked out from the world.

He watches Leonel drop Dad on the ground like a sack of rubbish, hands tied behind his back, one eye swollen and red, nose bleeding and broken. Dad must have struggled when they came to get him, he must have fought back. He shouldn’t have, Nacho thinks, detached, he shouldn’t have – _the fool_ , he only made it worse.

Time must have passed, as Nacho chokes and chokes on air. How long has it been? He doesn’t know. Seconds? A thousand years? It’s irrelevant.

They got Dad. They got Dad. They got Dad.

It’s over now.

But his senses slowly begin to return, and he swallows a lump in his throat, unglues his lips painfully, breathes out:

_“Please…”_

His voice is barely audible and feels like gravel coming out of his throat. He coughs, tries again:

“Don Hector… please… _please…”_

They all laugh. Leonel kicks Dad in the stomach, and Dad lets of a small wheezing cough. Nacho blinks away the tears that cloud his vision, makes his throat stop constricting. His whole body is shaking violently and Arturo holds him down, fingers digging into Nacho’s shoulders.

“ _I beg you… I’ll do anything… please, anything you want… please, Don Hector…”_ he sobs out, snot and blood getting into his mouth. The world is spinning again, fading out, and he fights to cling onto the last of his consciousness. “ _Please, kill me instead… just kill me…”_

“I told you I’d get him talking,” Hector exclaims, clapping his hands in mirth.

“ _Please, Don Hector…”_

“SHUT UP!” Hector yells, smile gone. “YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD JUST KILL ME AND WALK AWAY?! YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

Nacho is exhausted. Utterly and completely, in his bones, right to his core. His body is dying. The aftermath of the last few months, of being shot, the pain and the rage, the terror in front of him – it’s crushing him. His Dad lying there unconscious and bound and beaten – _crushes_ him.

This pain is not survivable.

“MY FAMILY HAS BUILT THIS WHOLE BUSINESS!! AND YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD JUST TAKE IT ALL FROM ME?! FUCK YOU!!”

“ _Please… please…”_ Nacho wails, but even as the sounds are leaving his mouth, he already knows what’s coming. Knows how this will end.

He’s been through this before, after all.

“ _Please…”_

Hector has a gun in his hand. Nacho hasn’t noticed before now, vision zeroed in on his Dad. He notices now.

“ _I’m begging you… please…”_

Hector points the gun at Dad.

“SALAMANCAS DO NOT FORGIVE!” he screams.

There’s a shot, an explosion right in his ears, and Dad’s body jerks on the ground. Crimson spot blossoms on his chest.

Nacho’s sob dies in his throat.

He is not held anymore, and his head hits the ground hard as he falls sideways. He can see Dad’s blood slowly spread around, making its way to where Nacho’s face is pressed into the sand.

“Bleed out and die, you fucking rat,” someone says somewhere far away.

Nacho doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Closes his eyes and waits for death to finally have mercy on him. This pain is not survivable.

He waits. Shouldn’t be long now.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you liked it, it'll make my day!


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